Salone del Mobile 2010 - Escape From Milan

Once we’d finished feeling sorry for ourselves after our extended journey home from this years Salone, we started to feel sorry for the manufacturers who had spent a small fortune to exhibit there - one day in and suddenly the only topic of conversation was a bizarrely improbable volcanic ash cloud! Coming from Iceland of all places! Surely a joke? Once everyone realised it wasn’t a joke, conversation quickly turned to escape routes. All flights grounded, trains booked up overnight…..how were we to get home?

Social networking really came into it’s own during The Cloud, with people taking to Twitter and Facebook to spread the latest news and possible routes home. Special commendation should go to Marcus Fairs of Dezeen, who posted a phenomenal number of Tweets to help stranded travellers, and landed himself with a massive phone bill in the process. Surely an OBE for Services to Design(ers Stuck in Milan) is in order?