When I got home from work this evening it seemed as though the airline companies had been playing a gigantic game of noughts and crosses in the sky. This picture doesn’t really do the image justice but it gives you an idea. The sight reminded me of one welcome effect of the volcanic ash cloud, when our blue skies were purely blue but these inadvertent vapour trails do have their own beauty, particularly when nature lays on a good sunset. Somewhere in Melvyn Peake’s Gormenghast trilogy there is a scene where a man sells people deckchairs so that they can sit at the edge of a cliff and watch the sunset. I think they would have bought tickets this evening.