POLLEN DIARIES: PART 19

I really don’t like it when I sneeze and my whole body gets involved. I just volleyed off what felt like a record number of explosive sneezes, and I felt my self contorting with every explosion.

Famously, your eyes clamp shut to protect the eyeballs from flying out of your sockets at a hundred miles an hour (I haven’t checked that with a medical professional but we’ve all heard it haven’t we? Bound to be true). Of course with hay fever, your scratchy old eyes are already red and sore, so squeezing them together makes them weep all the more, across your bright red face. So it looks like you’re crying your eyes out after a sneezing fit.

Your back convulses, your limbs swing into motion to make sure you’re splurging info your arm, or, better, a tissue (which you can’t see because your eyes are locked shut).

Your legs bounce up with the tightening of the vertebrae, and smash into whatever’s in the way (desk, fridge, coffee table, steering wheel) and pain ensues. I’ve grazed my knee this week (through my jeans) doing exactly this. There’s no time to say ‘ow’ though; the next snot burst is coming and your nose tingles like a warning bell.

Your head snaps back and forth with your neck as you sneeze. It can’t do you any good, that. Your shoulders shake, your toes curl, your mouth gulps in a load of new air (and pollen) and your brain sinks into depression.

Eventually, tear-stained and hot-faced, you sit back (or lie back) and it feels like you’ve given all your earthly strength to throwing the ring into the fires of Mordor and there’s nothing left of you to give. Oh and your knee’s bleeding and you’re clutching a sopping tissue.

I tried stuffing my nostrils with toilet paper tonight. Well no-one would see me; I figured it’s okay to look a little mad if nobody’s there to witness it. It actually reminded me of the time I was looking after my sister’s cats and had to deal with (what I might have described at the time as) a ‘litter tray situation’ - though tonight minus the rubber gloves. Just the old TP up the nose.

It didn’t work. I was still breathing in the grass seed somehow, and before long my eyes were streaming, and my papered nostrils were twitching with the pre-sneeze tickle.

Sleep will help. And this week is statistically the worst of it, I reckon. So I’ve doused myself with cold water, given my nose a kind of Armageddon trumpet blow, and gone to bed.