POLLEN DIARIES: PART 10

The hay fever's got me tonight. I'm sneezing all over the place and my eyes are watery.

Perhaps I shouldn't be out here in the park, watching the sunset. There's a lot of grass, getting right up my nose.

Is this the end of my sunset walks for a while then? Shame. Looking back, the hay fever lasted until the beginning of July last year! A whole month of this? I hope not. July seems ages away.

So. My vision is blurred by the tears and my nose is congested and explosive.

I can still hear the birds though.

There's one whistling in a tree near me. He sounds like R2-D2: such a complex pattern of trills and chirping. There are others squeaking and popping in the trees all around - I can hear them calling to each other, serenading the sun. Slowly the chorus fades as the light grows weaker.

There are two teenage girls out here on the next bench. They discuss the kind of things you'd expect teenage girls to discuss, and with exactly the same kind of intonations as ever. A loud giggle, an 'Oh My Days' and an expletive about how 'sexy' some guy is. I wonder to myself what the birds make of it, not to mention the distinctive rhythm of me sneezing and sniffling.

A distant car horn joins in. Then a train rumbles and whooshes over the tracks on its way to Oxford or Birmingham. A dog yaps somewhere, and still the birds sing.

I'm sitting here wondering now, whether animals get allergies. I guess it's possible. I've never heard a bird sneezing.

Then, they don't have flats to go to or offices to work in or air conditioning or cars. They just keep on singing as though they were made to do it.

I'm going indoors.