nineveh_uk

If I found myself having to rescue earth-moving equipment from very close to fresh lava from an erupting volcano that might open new fissures at any moment, I hope that I too might record it on my phone and then put the Mission Impossible theme tune over the top. Like this.

I have had today off work, as my parents are here for the long weekend. I cannot overstate the pleasure of waking up this morning with the autoreply on email and knowing that I had the day off. It's been a long term, and we're only a month in. Normally, if I have a 3 day weekend I take the Friday, but mundane as this is, I'm enjoying a revelation. Admittedly, what we did with it was go to the tip and plant an apple tree, but hey, it was still nice.

I am reading The Stasi Poetry Circle by Philip Oltermann. The subject matter is extremely interesting, and I grant that I have read it under less than ideal conditions (being knackered), but I have to admit that I think a livelier writer could have made more of it. It's the Stasi, you hardly expect it to be funny, but there is an inherent, if dark, absurdity to the premise that feels lacking in the telling, and I think a more skillful writer could have made something more powerful of it.

In other news, it looks like the Reykjanes peninsula may be gearing up for another eruption, possibly a more inconvenient one. I am also tremendously enjoying the small flush of new She Who Became the Sun fic.

On Sunday afternoon I went to the cinema for the first time since February 2022 (David Copperfield) to see Fire or Love, a documentary about volcanologists and film-makers Katia and Maurice Krafft, whose footage anyone who has enjoys volcano documentaries will recognise some of, and who died along with 41 other people at the eruption of Mt Unzen (Japan) in 1991.

As a volcano film, and a film about a pair of deeply committed scientists, it was very enjoyable, and I was glad I had seen it in the cinema rather than on my television. Unfortunately, while much of the script was good, the remaining portion and the narration as a whole was the most awful glurge. Better to have called it Fire of Lurve. Miranda July's voiceover sounds like it is being played at half speed, and while the sections using the Kraffts' own words (variously spoken by them or actors) are engaging, and my problem wasn't the subject of them as a couple, but the overall presentation lapsed into a tedious sentimentality when I would have preferred a brisker narration and more about the Kraffts and about volcanoes.

With this in mind, I shall clearly have to watch the forthcoming second Werner Herzog documentary about volcanoes, also about the Kraffts, which the Guardian found lacking purpose in the absence of July's narration. Less lurve can only be to the good.

Here is the Fire of Love trailer. If the voiceover annoys you, it will annoy you all film. The volcano footage is still great.

When other volcanoes run out of steam, Etna delivers (webcam). Some nice photos here.

Otherwise, thank crunchie it's Friday (dates self).

The anticipated eruption on the Reykjanes peninsula has arrived and can be seen here: https://www.livefromiceland.is/webcams/reykjanes/ Though right now not very well, presumably because lots of people are trying to do the same.

It is well known that Icelandic pronunciation can be difficult for native English speakers. This is in large part due to its non-intuitive spelling, which uses letters to represent completely different sounds from those in English.

For instance, it is not easy to guess from the spelling that the correct pronunciation of Eyjafjallajökull is ‘the Icelandic volcano’, nor that Grímsvötn is correctly pronounced as ‘another Icelandic volcano’. Given these examples, the English speaker, used to working with a spelling system that seems to work on the principle of ‘find a work that is spelled like that and pronounce it slightly differently’* might naturally assume that Bárðarbunga is pronounced ‘a further Icelandic volcano’. But no! The good people at Iceland Review tell us that it isn’t pronounced like that at all, in fact that it is pronounced fairly similarly as it is spelt – just as long as you know how to pronounce á in Icelandic, of course – and helpfully provide this example.

Will it erupt? Obviously I hope so, though in a minor tourist way that doesn’t cost too much or interfere with my flights. Volcano enthusiast as I am, I don’t feel the need to witness a repeat of the Laki eruption/Skaftár Fires

If it does erupt, what will the broadcast media do? Will they take the sensible course of getting a sound file from the embassy now and agreeing on a reasonable approximation that will be used by all employees, much as we do with Barcelona, Berlin, Rio de Janeiro, Kilimanjaro and pretty much everywhere abroad that doesn’t have its own name in English? I wouldn’t count on it. Why say boring Bowthabungya when you can try and say Bárðarbunga exactly like an Icelander, fail, and fall back on ‘a different Icelandic volcano’, while hoping desperately that the next one to go up is Katla.

*Applied to paperwork, this is the principle on which the entire administration of the University of Oxford seems to operate.