Blog by Gideon Rachman of the Financial Times (to which I definitely related!)

There are loads of us all over the world. Volcano exiles. As I sat around in Tel Aviv over the weekend – gloomily surveying the dwindling options for getting back to Britain – I took a twisted sort of comfort from the stories of friends in similar or worse predicaments. My colleague Tim Harford sent a message from Helsinki. Other than waiting the ash-cloud out, his best option was “27-hour ferry to near Hamburg, standing-room only to Brussels, swim across the channel”. As Tim’s message arrived, I was checking out the rumour of a ferry from Haifa to Brindisi in Italy. It only takes three days.

My reaction to volcanic exile has been a bit like the bereavement cycle – grief, anger, denial, acceptance. The only time I succumbed to incredulous rage was on the flight home to London on Thursday, the first day of the crisis, when the pilot announced that we were turning back to Tel Aviv. Volcanic ash? What an absurd excuse. Surely, this couldn’t be happening? I had meetings to go to in London; articles to write; family coming to dinner that night. I had heard of the right of return to the Holy Land, but I had no wish to exercise it myself. The situation must be fixable. As soon as we got off the aircraft a colleague rang a travel agent in London and grabbed the few remaining seats on the next British Airways flight out of Israel. We congratulated ourselves on our quick reactions, went out to dinner and prepared to leave the following morning. But the following morning, the cloud hadn’t moved. It was getting worse.

After a while it began to occur to me that my gathering gloom might have less to do with missing my family and several appointments, than with the unfamiliar sensation of being thwarted. Wealth and privilege has made babies of us all. Of course I should be able to get anywhere in the world in 24 hours! There is always a flight out. There is no logistical problem that cannot be solved with a mixture of ingenuity and money. Yet the volcano seemed strangely indifferent to the fact that I have a large credit limit on my Visa card. Its effects are surprisingly democratic. The cloud of ash would not even part for Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, stuck in Portugal – who had to fly to Rome and drive.

The urge to beat the volcano and achieve my goal of getting to London meant that I found myself contemplating increasingly crazy options. Fly to Madrid – which was below the ash-exclusion area, hire a car, drive to Holland, where there are still places to be had on ferries to Britain, take an overnight boat. But that would take more than 48 hours. It sounded pointless and exhausting. Better to calm down and sit it out in Israel. Go for a walk along the beach. Eat an ice-cream. Finish that book review. Wait for the cloud to move.

But then, checking the news bulletins for the hundredth time that day, I came across a vulcanologist (that newly famous profession) who announced that the Icelandic eruption could go on for months. What if the cloud covered the whole of Europe and just sat there? The prospect made movement, any movement, seem attractive again.

With the scientists on the television increasingly bleak in their predictions, I became adept at the game of “at least I’m not”. At least I’m not travelling with children; at least I’m not a penniless backpacker, stuck in Nepal; at least I’m not old or sick; at least I’m not a resident of the Gaza Strip, for whom flights to London or Paris would never be on the agenda anyway.

I began to imagine a world without air travel. We would be back to the 1930s, when soldiers fighting abroad were separated from their families not just for months, but for years; when cricket teams going to Australia took the boat. Of course, we could still tweet, text and even talk to people on the other side of the world – but actually visiting them? Forget about it. The Green party’s agenda of localisation would triumph by default. How would the world economy cope if transatlantic flight became impossible, not just for a week, but for months on end? Perhaps I should buy shares in shipping companies and tele-conferencers?

My reverie was interrupted by the news that the Sunday morning flight to Marseilles that I had been counting on was cancelled. The cloud had got there before I could. But a flight to Rome had come open. A quick internet search revealed an overnight train from Rome to Paris. That sounded almost pleasant.

Once in Rome, however, I found the city overwhelmed by other volcano exiles. The woman at the tourist office said that all trains to France or Germany were fully booked until the middle of the week. A shaken traveller told me that the train station in Rome was like a scene out of Dante – with thousands of people milling around hopelessly, trying to travel north. My travelling companions and I decided to follow in the footsteps of the German chancellor and take to the Italian motorways.

By early on Monday morning, we had reached northern Italy. All that remains is to cross the Alps into France, navigate the French train strike, get to Paris and then secure a ticket on the Eurostar to London. The end of my life as a volcano exile is in sight. Strange to say, but I think I might miss it.