Debris falls in Ireland all the time

Further to the recent and ongoing volcanic eruption in Iceland, which has been of severe disruption to air travel over Britain and the northern part of Europe, reports have been coming in of cars in Ireland acquiring a fine coating of dust attributed to the distribution locally by strong northerly winds of fine particles from the event.

It is not unheard of for similar phenomena to be observed here. Some years back a particularly energetic dust storm in Africa resulted in red Sahara Desert sand being deposited in some areas.

My own neighbour reported only three or four years ago, a coating of pale dust on the bonnet of his car which we traced to the two Lithuanian men working a circular saw in my front garden. Indeed, the neighbour on the other side reported deposits of stones and topsoil on his car which investigations revealed had come from the operation of a tree-root shredding machine by a gobshite.

In February 2003, a piece of chewing gum from the space shuttle, Columbia, got stuck in my hair as I was passing through Tymon Park. This mirrored an earlier incident when I was 13 years old and my best friend was skewered by a red hot screwdriver that had fallen out of Skylab.

My father informed me that he saw at least two Cubans on the windshield of his Commer diesel lorry following the Bay of Pigs invasion of 1961.

His father maintained that a Filipino gentleman landed on his dung cart following the Taal volcano eruption in 1911.

The list goes on.