Here I am sat outside in the sun with a large cup of tea waiting for my sons to arrive, and it is quiet! Very quiet! It is 10-30 in the morning, the birds are singing, the burn babbling away, the odd puff of wind rustling the grass, a sheep bleating in the distance, a peregrine falcon is calling too, what's going on? Has my hearing miraculously recovered? Just what is going on? I ask myself again. The answer? No aircraft, not one, not a vapour trail, not a buzz of a distant engine, not a roar as a passing RAF Tornado goes by at 200 feet ------just nature going about its business.

It is amazing what we get used to I suppose, but to think that only 100 years ago that is what our ancestors would have heard, bees buzzing, birds singing.......................... lucky them! Maybe that volcano is not such a bad thing, for some of us, after all.