In May 1980 my brother and I spent a weekend with relatives from my father`s side on the Island of Fehmarn in the Baltic Sea when we heard about an unheard of Eruption of a volcano in the Pacific Noth West of the United States. The next morning, our host, a Cousin of my father`s, called us down into the garden. Having arrived there, we found him standing beneath the clothesline, pointing his finger at the bedsheets hanging on the line each of which was stained with colours ranging from pale yellow to ashen grey.
