Left the house this morning to go for our customary walk. I felt something brushing my face. Spider webs, I thought, still bleary. Nigel, more observant than I, had noticed a white layer of something on the ground. "Is this ash?" he asked. I retreated under the car port, and sure enough, my few seconds of exposure had covered my hair and shoulders with fine grey powder...

OK. Walk cancelled. TV and Internet fired up. Of course, Gunung Merapi, our beautiful but dangerous volcanic neighbour, was our first suspect. But no, the culprit was Gunung Kelud, more than 200 kms away.

Volcanic ash fall is very strange. It comes down like dry, silent rain. It piles up like thin snow. And at 6.15 the world was still eerily dark.

Nigel, armed with a sturdy umbrella, boldly went out to fetch brekkie from Bu Nani (who has put her prices up to 12,000 rupiah for two, by the way). He came back ash-covered.

A little later it started to rain. Ash + rain = mud. The carport roof always leaks in heavy rain, just in front of the step. Today it was as if our roof had diarrhoea... So we now have our very own volcanic mud pool -- authentically ploppy when wet, admirably sculpted when dry...

Yogya's schools are closed, and our department at uni cancelled all lectures. Flight Radar shows an air desert over our bit of Java at the moment, and dramatic route changes on the part of incoming aircraft.

All faintly disconcerting...

Dodgy things, volcanoes. As is admirably summed up in this poem by Naomi Shihab Nye.