THIS past week an Icelandic volcano has quite literally made history happen before our eyes.

No other natural phenomenon could have grounded aircraft over a swathe of Europe for days at a time. For the first time in our lives, generations of us have found out what life was like before the invention of mass air travel.

Yes, we’ve had to use other quieter, less gas guzzling forms of transport. Journeys have taken longer. Many people – colleagues included – have had to stay in Morocco, or London, or Lanzarote several days longer than they had planned, with the consequent additional cost, frustration and insecurity.

We at home have watched the eruption of the giant plume into the sky with fascination and, in my case, a sense of awe.

I have to admit that I find this particular freak of nature fascinating, beautiful and terrible at the same time.

Two years ago, I was lucky enough to gaze down into the crater of Vesuvius, which is still smoking, still glowing with streaks of red embers, like a pan of water on low simmer. The Neopolitans say that it could blow at any time, but still they cling to their mountain-side.

Realistically, we should be concerned about this latest eruption in Iceland. After all, none of us knows what the longer term effects of the current phenomenon might be.

What goes up must normally come down. What impact will these clouds have on vulnerable wildlife, let alone human life?

Then there are the tragedies that have begun to unfold because transportation has been curtailed – the organ donations that haven’t reached their destination, the growers who have lost thousands of pounds because their produce has not been received, the fishermen put out of business with their fish rotting in container loads, the business deals that have simply not taken place, the people whose holiday of a lifetime has finished before it began, and unexpected consequences yet to be.

But what I have been conscious of this week is a sense of wonder that, despite all our modern communication systems, computer technology, satellite capabilities, advanced engineering knowledge and tip-top space age transport, man remains unable to control the power that lies underneath the ground we are standing on.