POLLEN DIARIES: PART 21

I'm not one for exaggeration as you know, but this week I think I've had the worst hay fever in the history of the world.

Cetirizine hydrochloride: ineffective. Just makes me grouchy and unpleasant to be around. Loratadine: grumpy and sneezy, still five dwarves short of a fairy tale. Vaseline up the nostrils: the whole world smells of Vaseline, and yes, all it does it trap the pollen in exactly the place you really don't want it. Local honey: myth, apparently. Tissues up the nose: charming. Also makes you breathe with your mouth open, causing lips that are drier than a ship's biscuit, oh and a sore throat.

Speaking of a sore throat, have you ever sneezed so loud and for so long that your throat catches fire? You can't swallow at first, then when you do, the inside of the oesophagus is so sensitive that a tiny bit of anything feels like you're eating sandpaper. Inevitably, you start coughing - which up until about fifteen months ago, would have gathered concerned looks, and if you were lucky, a friendly pat on the back. Now, it has people reaching for a hazmat suit and shouting 'unclean, unclean' as they run away down the street.

During a volley of earth-quaking sneezes, it's all you can do to keep your head about you. I found myself spinning about my flat, doubled-over with the allergic reflex as though I'd been punched in the stomach - sneeze after sneeze after sneeze, wondering when will it stop? It's infuriating. I span through reams of toilet roll and sneezed and blew and sneezed and blew until my eyes felt like they would pop out of my head and roll across the carpet.

When you're not in the middle of the snotty blitzkrieg, you are of course subject to what you might call the background level of allergic rhinitis - meaning permanently sniffly. There'll be no hanging around with people who don't like the sound of someone snorting through their nostrils; they'll go right off you. And if you yourself are one of those people, then you'll go right off you too.

My puffed-up, bloodshot eyes swim with tears, my face is red and streaky and I'm panting with my mouth open, just trying to get on with things. The whole thing is a colossal irritation.

Apparently, the man who discovered hay fever, John Bostock rented a clifftop cottage for three months of summer and 'nearly escaped the disease'. Can I do that? Does that work? Did it work for John?

I think I'll stay where I am. Being on a clifftop during a disorientating bout of explosive sneezing might not be the cleverest plan.

ISOLATION DIARIES PART 98: SECOND DOSE

“Okay there?” asked the doctor, “For a moment, you looked like you were in a trance...”

There was no time to explain. These vaccination appointments are seconds long; you queue up, you walk in, before you can pass the time of day, your t-shirt’s rolled up, your left arm’s jabbed, and you’re on your way back into the sunshine.

There were fewer people than last time. No queue of 40-somethings milling around the cones, just a small handful giving their details to the volunteers under the green gazebos. I went straight to the front of the queue.

It’s been 9 weeks since my first dose of Oxford Astra-Zeneca. Back then, I’d texted my sisters to let them know I’d been vaccinated, but this time it all felt much more run-of-the-mill, more like simply getting the flu jab, I suppose. I didn’t feel they’d particularly be interested. I took my paperwork into the building, queued at the door, then waited for the volunteer inside to send me to whichever room was next free.

Moments later, the doctor (he was quite obviously a doctor by the way) looked at me walking into room number 4, and had said,

“Okay there? For a moment you looked like you were in a trance.”

I’d been transfixed by a picture on the wall. I didn’t say anything, but that picture made me stop in my tracks - because it’s a picture that seems to have been following me round for most of my life.

It’s a dove in flight, left to right. It carries an olive branch in its mouth, and it’s at the centre of a pattern of radial beams that extend to the edges of the frame like rays of sunlight. Each beam is slightly reflective, like translucent glass I suppose, giving the whole thing the impression of a textured mirror. The dove too, is sort of textured, so it looks three dimensional to touch, though all of this is behind glass of course, so you’d not be able to tell. The dove and its rays are then encircled in a portrait oval surround, which I think is sort of silvery, and the frame, at least most times I’ve seen it, is usually a tarnished gold.

And there it was. Not in my granny’s house in Cheshire in the early 1980s, not in our house above the stairs, where it lived for years, not in that random Chinese takeaway I went to once, or even in the rented room my friends once lived in. It was there in the doctor’s surgery, looking me in the face while I got my second dose of Oxford Astra-Zeneca.

I guess there must have been hundreds of these things in the 70s (that looks like around the time they’d be popular) and there are a few reproductions still knocking about.

It reminds me of that old theory that a series of house fires were once caused by a painting - the ‘crying boy’ painting. Weird, every house that burned down had had the same painting up, they used to say. Must be demon-possessed. Or perhaps everyone just had that same painting, like they also had light switches and ageing fuse boxes.

Anyway, there really was no time to explain. I was on my way down the road, the sun bursting through the summer sky, my jacket slung over my shoulder.

It could just have been God’s way of reminding me that peace has settled over my life, and that everything will be alright. If so, I can go along with that.

LEAPING FROM SOMEWHERE COMFORTABLE

I resigned yesterday. I was nervous about logging on to the call, knowing it would be something of a shock to my manager in Minnesota, who was expecting a regular weekly one-to-one.

"So," I said, right from the top, and just as about as cheerily as possible, "I have news..."

"Oh!" said she, surprised, "What's new, Matt?"

And then I launched into the speech I'd rehearsed. It wasn't very easy. Why would it be? I'm ending 9 years of work at the same company, doing a job that I think I've been a singular constant in. The seasons have changed, the teams have changed, the management has changed, but I've been steadily working away at the heart of the docs team since the second quarter of 2012.

She was naturally disappointed, but still said the right things and asked the right questions. I found my eyes flicking around the room, overlooking the sunlit street as I explained some of my reasons. I was avoiding eye contact with the tiny 'video on' light and the laptop screen. My hands were in motion and my lips were saying things like 'I just felt' and 'It's time to move on' and other things she admittedly had heard me express concern about before.

It's a strange thing, leaping from somewhere comfortable. There is an enormous urge to stay where it's warm and familiar, where you know everyone and you feel like part of the furniture. As I was registering her disappointment on-screen (and my hands were trying to explain my decision) I felt that twinge of regret.

Am I doing the right thing? Will the new job work out as something I can actually do? Will it all be alright? Will I be able to do the handover well? How will the team react?

Suddenly, it felt incredibly real, and a little bit weird.

It's a natural part of change though, I suppose. Risk, that feeling of leaping, not knowing for sure that you're going to land well, is the exhilaration of life, and the adrenaline we sometimes need.

So then. I kickstarted the process. Adrenaline flushed through me. Then, later, as HR were quick to point out in their email, I will be missed, and as I replied, I will miss, but that's okay: it's time to leap.

ISOLATION DIARIES PART 97: DELTA DELAY

There could never have been a hard stop. To go from complete lockdown all the way to hugs and high-fives would have been like taking the nation over a cliff-edge - especially with these extra variants around.

It always had to be a gradual thing. How gradual, and how smooth though, has been the biggest question over the last few months. And today, the government are (almost certainly) going to announce that the current restrictions must continue for four more weeks, delaying Liberation (Freedom) Day until maybe July 19th.

The Delta Variant is the reason. Delta, delta, delta. Cynically too high up the alphabet for me. Will there be an Epsilon? Seems inevitable. In the meantime we're sort of limping out of lockdown, and roughly hoping that enough of us will have been vaccinated over the next month.

The reaction to all of this has been a sort of resigned huff so far, I think. More finger pointing about how it could have been handled, but on the whole it's been expected that this would happen, and everyone's sort of okay with the delay. I'm not surprised by that really - though I would have been a few months back. To a large degree, the pandemic has become so much a part of our lives now, it's just there in the background, blending in, part of our world, like Brexit, football, or the Ozone Layer. This delay has to happen. Everyone sort of knows it.

I think it does remind me to be more careful. For the last few weeks, things have felt much more social - in fact, I've seen more people than ever - and while surfaces and fabrics could be hazardous, it's always people who transmit this thing - in the air, on a laugh, in a summer song. So I guess we're in for a few more cautious weeks of battle against the Delta variant. And to be honest, that's okay; I'm not quite ready for high-fives and hugs just yet.

The Five Dates

Back to School Day: 0 days

Back to Sixes Day: 0 days

Haircut Day: 0 days

Big Travel Day: 0 days

Freedom Day: 36 days

POLLEN DIARIES: PART 20

To be honest, the old hay fever's been pretty good this year. April? Fine. No tree pollen for me. May? Surprisingly sweet. Sure, I squirted nasal spray most mornings and that, seemed to help. June then? So far so good. At least for the first ten days anyw...

I exploded. Loud, violent, head-shaking sneezes that ricocheted from the walls and rumbled around the valley. Last night, like a fresh thunderstorm had settled over one particular house in one particular street, I found myself turning in circles, bursting into the crook of my elbow, into tissues, and into (sorry about this) my hand.

My face was wet with tears and red with heat; my eyes tired and bloodshot. I felt like a snotty zombie, not quite sure which way to turn or what to do. In the end, I just went to bed.

Now. It's hot. The room is baking from the day, and as you pull back the duvet, you wonder whether you need it. Moreover, as you sneeze your way over to the open window, you wonder whether you need that either. The choice it seems, is to be boiled overnight or to be punched in the face by the grass seed.

I opted to keep the window open. The net curtains blew softly in the summer breeze as I switched the lamp out and climbed into bed.

But my lips were dry and my throat was a cave of sandpaper. So I got up and filled a water bottle. More loud sneezing, followed by some loud guzzling. Followed by one heavy output breath, and one heavy inwward one. Oh and then another sneeze for good measure.

I did get to sleep in the end, but it took a while. Then this morning, I woke up not feeling too bad. There was a gentle breeze from the open window. I got up and sneezed.

I guzzled some more water and then went and immediately stuffed two bits of kitchen roll in each nostril. And that, is how I'm rolling today. I hate hay fever.

ISOLATION DIARIES PART 96: FINE BALANCE

"Covid Situation finely balanced, NHS boss warns" - BBC News.

This week, a number of things happened. There were some meet-ups. I went to a barbecue, a family picnic, and a few other things. Under the blue sky and warm sun, I temporarily forgot that this was what normal felt like, and slipped almost straight back into hugs and high-fives. It was beautiful.

There was one day too this week when no-one died from Covid at all. Zero - across England, Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland, for the first time since this whole thing began. A statistical fluke perhaps, but (as I've said before) the first patches of blue in a cloudy old sky.

Vaccinations are up too. Under 30s will be getting their first shot soon, and this week, the UK's medicines regulator gave approval for 12-15 year olds to have the Pfizer vaccine, presumably in the new school year. We're already at the point where most of the adults in the UK have been partially inoculated, hopefully meaning that the disease simply won't hospitalise vast numbers of people. The NHS has a little more room to breathe, and with the hope of Liberation Day ahead, there's a cool summer breeze, billowing across the national mood.

And then. There are 'concerning signs'. A senior medical expert suggested that the 21st-of-June easing of restrictions might need to be delayed. The travel corridors tightened, with Portugal slipping back onto the Amber List. The Indian Variant spread further and wider than expected, potentially increasing the number of infections by as much as two-thirds, and there's surge testing going on in my town, where I live.

We're exhausted. Many of us have taken to ignoring the news now, where we can. The fatigue of hope and despair is just too much, whether we know we're living in it or not. Everything is awesome, and terrible all at once, and we'd rather switch it all off, pretend it's all fine for a sunny day, and roll into the park with a picnic blanket and a punnet of strawberries. Or perhaps that's just me.

The situation seems to have always been finely balanced. It was a thing that happened 'over there in China' to begin with. Then it was a thing to be slightly worried about. We still went about our business, perhaps with an elbow bump instead of a handshake, but things were pretty much normal. Then the virus started winning the war. Then we fought back with lockdowns and masks and social distancing and hand-washing. Then the virus started mutating. Then we started vaccinating against it. Then it mutated some more. And now the fear is that the Indian (or Delta they're calling it now) Variant might mutate once again and become smart enough to completely outwit our vaccines altogether.

Can you imagine what that would feel like? If we woke to the news that the vaccines are now ineffective against the latest Covid variant? It doesn't even bear thinking about. It would be like a sort of alternate 1944, where the Germans discover how to make an H-bomb.

We've got another family do today. Outdoors of course, but nonetheless a big old jamboree of a thing - full of the cautious and the carefree. I'm sure it will be fine, but like there must have been on summer days on the lawn, with Lancaster bombers swooping across the sky, there's bound to be a fine balance of the two in everyone's mind.   

The Five Dates

Back to School Day: 0 days

Back to Sixes Day: 0 days

Haircut Day: 0 days

Big Travel Day: 0 days

Liberation Day: 16 days

LITTLE PIECES OF JOY

“I’ve got an announcement to make,” said my sister, waving her bare arms around like Cleopatra. It didn’t help that in honour of her 50th birthday, she was also wearing a white toga dress and a tiara.

The sun was shining, the river behind her regal form, sparkling. Boats and barges splashed by and the kids laughed through the warm air and blue sky.

“I’d like to announce,” she proclaimed, “...that me and Mr Captain Hook are pursuing a relationship.”

Mr Captain Hook, I later discovered, is a real person, somewhere in America; a fellow conspiracy-theorist, and a man she met online, and not, as it turns out, a fictional pirate who lost a hand to a crocodile while being taunted by a flying boy.

“Bravo!” I said loudly, amidst the applause on the riverbank - though not loudly enough to be interpreted. Then I turned to Sammy and remarked on how ‘dramatic’ my sister can be. Sammy smiled back, pleasantly. I wondered what might have happened if we had announced our relationship to the world like that. Later on we both remarked how different me and my three siblings actually are.

This was the first time I’d seen all my family together in this whole season! There were my nephews, tall and thirteen, cackling with secret laughter at all the things thirteen year old boys usually cackle about, before disappearing up the trees that needed to be climbed. There was my other sister, quiet and confident, with relationship news of her own she could never dream of annunciating thank you very much, to the world, at a family picnic. There were the Intrepids in their garden chairs, smiling serenely; the real king and queen of the feast. And there were my aunty and uncle, looking on silently and thoughtfully.

It was all rather like you might picture heaven, but heaven if you were sort of dreaming it. All those months of missing your loved ones, ending with a sunlit reunion on a beautiful day. It seemed like the perfect denouement. After a while, my younger sister arrived, beaming and joyful and stylish as she always is, with her youngest in sun-hat and shorts. A cheer went up, as it should. I wonder sometimes whether we all carry little pieces of heaven with us, and it’s those pieces that light up with joy whenever they recognise another piece. This felt a little bit like that.

We weren’t there for long; perhaps an hour or so. After a while I got too hot and regretted throwing on jeans and a shirt. I had a little overcrowding-anxiety too, which I’ll be honest, took me by surprise. Sammy and I left as politely as possible and walked back to the car in the afternoon sunshine, talking about how great an invention family is. She, thinking about hers, I pondering mine.

I’ve missed that connection with my sisters: the cool one, the quiet one, the controversial one. I’ve missed the being-together that’s been so instrumental in our keeping-it-together.

Picnic blanket under one arm, shadows falling ahead on the grass. I squeezed Sammy’s hand. She squeezed back. And deep inside me, a little piece of joy lit up like Christmas and holidays and birthdays all rolled into one.