There is something very strange about having your life seriously impacted by a volcano. At least there is if you live in London. If you lived on the island of Stromboli perhaps it would be more mundane. In any case I am finding it very weird and given the difficulty people seem to be having in grasping the enormity of the situation, I think I am not alone.

The sense of being in an out-of-control airport novel was heightened on Sunday night by the formation of special government taskforce, code-named Cobra and spearheaded by the mysteriously named Transport Secretary Lord Adonis. I’m not sure how this ends but I won’t be completely surprised if Lord Adonis turns out to be the villain.

The Cobra taskforce — one has to ask why they need a code name at all if they are going to tell everyone what it is — has drawn a contingency plan to repatriate the estimated 200,000 Britons who have been stranded abroad. Broadly it is expected to involve the military airlifting people from all over the globe to Spain before the navy and dragooned commercial cruisers take them the final leg by sea. If it happens it will be a peacetime logistical undertaking of historic proportions. Two naval ships have already been mobilised to help transport civilians across the Channel. Before this the civilians had been taking matter into their own hands, with private boat owners generously, albeit illegally, ferrying stranded holiday makers back and forth across the pond.

This has been a dramatic change in general attitude over the past 36 hours. Up until then the overwhelming focus in the media was been on families on package tours stuck in the Canaries and personal tales of people missing weddings. It’s inconvenient but we’ll keep a stiff upper lip. John Cleese did his part by taking a £3,300 taxi from Norway to Belgium and everyone patted themselves on the back for British ingenuity.

Meanwhile, volcanologists such as the charming Clive Oppenheimer were appearing on the telly looking very worried and pointing out that we have no idea when Eyjafjallajökul is going to stop spouting ash, but our best estimates are somewhere between right now and six months from now. Possibly longer. So perhaps a stiff upper lip might not be quite enough then.  As the penny drops, the emphasis has shifted to the economic side of things and the main story has been the rather obvious fact the airlines are losing vast amounts of money.  BA has announced the figure of £20 million a day. Already government bailouts are being seriously talked about.

Whatever happens, the effects on the economy will undoubtedly go beyond airlines and mango importers.  Right now I am working in post-production on a reality TV series (it’s pretty highbrow stuff). The problem is that the last episodes were filmed in Malaysia. Filming wrapped on the day of the eruption.  Nineteen cast and crew — including the celebrity host — are stuck in Malaysia with no contracts, no pay and no way home.  We can’t get the tapes back to the UK either, so those of us in the £800 per day edit suites are also going to be sitting idle. Almost all of the crew had other jobs starting this week, which they will be unable to work on and in case of key roles such as camera operators, production on those jobs may be halted as well.

At about 3pm today it was announced that the volcano had slowed down and British airspace would be opened sometime tomorrow. At 9.45pm or about 20 minutes before writing this, it was announced that a new ash cloud was heading towards England and airports would likely stay closed after all. That worried looking volcanologist did say the eruption(s) would likely be sporadic. If there is one thing I have learnt from airport novels it is that the disregarded and nerdishly handsome scientist with predictions of doom is usually worth listening to.

Anyway, for the time being I’m happy. Until those tapes come in from Malaysia I have some time off. And despite the cloud of toxic ash that is supposed to be hovering above our heads, the weather this week has been gloriously sunny.

Rafiq Copeland blogs at Back in a Bit