Well, the "new thing" this week is definitely the ash fall that has temporarily blighted our beautiful Yogya.

We went out today to get breakfast, and do some necessary shopping. We realized how lucky we are to live in a perumahan, where there is little traffic. Outside its perimeter, visibility drops dramatically. The air is full of ash kicked up by passing vehicles.

And our lovely city resembles a moonscape.

People are starting to clear up, but most horizontal surfaces are still grey with ash. Water turns the ash to a grey, claggy substance with the consistency and slipperiness of clay.

Yogya's lovely red roofs are grey. Its lush green leaves are grey. The ripe grains of rice are grey. Only the slender, tender, very vertical new rice blades have conserved their freshness. The privilege of the young...

We arrived at our favourite weekend breakfast spot coated with dust. We brushed ourselves down, but when we left, poor Rufus had been coated with dust all over again.

The supermarket was in a state of siege: every checkout clogged, many shelves stripped.

We biked back through the dust cloud, resolving to stay at home until the rain has done some natural cleansing...

I feel kind of horrified. And very, very small...

But also very grateful. Compared with so many others caught up in this catastrophe, we've got off very lightly indeed.