There was some air traffic in Middle England this past weekend, but sadly only the rather inelegant lifting off by a number of swans from the River Wye. Otherwise the skies were blissfully clear of noise, pollution and vapour trails, replaced by the deafening sound of business and leisure travellers gnashing their collective teeth.

The man at the local cider farm thought it might all be Iceland's fiendish revenge for our dear Prime Minister's cavalier use last year of anti-terrorist legislation to freeze the assets of the failed Icelandic banks. Another conspiracy theory going the Saturday night rounds was the frankly fanciful idea that the Russians had bombed the Eyjafjallajoekull volcano for some unexplained military or economic reason.

But it was an ill wind, or lack of it that was blowing frustrated tourists into hotels all round the ancient kingdom of Mercia, who had been expecting instead to be settling down for some suitable "ooh la la" in Paris and other foreign destinations. Many an extra bottle of wine and sticky toffee puddings were sold this weekend by way of balm for lost foreign travel moments.

Sadly, the idyllic, indeed bucolic joys of an unexpected English staycation could not prevent Blackberries and Wi Fi delivering news and messages of distress from further afield penetrating. An engineer working on an infrastructure project emailed to advise a potential crisis in Copenhagen, where hordes of stranded British tourists were threatening to eat their way through that lovely city's entire supply of herrings.

A distraught Edinburgh lady texted with rising panic from the bus station at Alicante, where she was being told that the next seat on a bus was not until four days later on a charabanc alleged but not certain to be ending up in Brussels. Could my international network of insolvency practitioners somehow spirit her away from this nightmare and home to Scotland, she pleaded?

Then came the saddest question of all, from an aviation sector executive, wondering if they would be eligible for redundancy if the cause could be shown to be an Act of God. This interrupted my final agonizing, which led me to cancel an imminent conference in Cyprus - just in time to prevent several delegates from India, Nigeria and other exotic destinations having to turn round half way to the Aegean. Sales of olives, taramasalata and retsina will surely slump as part of the ripples of collateral financial damage.

Signs that the UK's no-fly zones will be re-opened soon are uncertain, despite apparently successful test-flights and much protest from the industry. When they do eventually clear the long jam and get the air lanes open again, let's hope they stay that way. And let's hope that the economic damage is less serious than we fear. Most important of all, let's hope that Iceland's other nearby and much fiercer volcano remains quiescent.

However, there is a moral to this strange tale, this brief passage of disruption. We should all wonder how we came to take easy air travel so much for granted. How short will our memories be?  Probably too short, but one day it will happen again and it would behove us all to be better prepared next time.