The hay fever is toying with me. Normally as soon as the sunny weather starts, so too does the runny nose, itchy throat and streaming eyes, and I find myself popping pills to keep it under control. And this, of course, has a knock-on effect on my alcohol tolerance, etc.
This year, it’s been holding back. Friends who suffer with me have fallen one by one, Twitter tells of snot explosions far and wide, so I’ve been fully expecting my own insides to burst outwards in sympathy.
My mum always used to tell me that she once had hay fever and “grew out of it”. Every year in my late teens, I hoped this would finally be the day that I outgrew the need for a mucous outlet pipe from my face. But it kept coming back and back, and eventually I resigned myself to perpetual pollination.
But this year, I find my childish hopes of a magic cure resurfacing. I’ve not done anything to treat it – I hear you can try controlled exposure to local honey, or have yourself “desensitised”, which sounds horrifying – but it’s mostly quiet nonetheless.
I said “mostly”. On Saturday I went to a picnic and lay down in the grass for a while, almost daring the fever to break. And for about fifteen minutes, I thought I felt it coming. A tingle in my throat, maybe a teasing drip of snot. So I reckon it’s in there somewhere waiting for the most inconvenient moment, probably during one of my attempts to talk to girls.
Anyone else find the hay fever being weirdly quiet this year? Has the pollution finally killed off a certain type of pollen? Or am I just having a contrary 2011?
