POLLEN DIARIES: PART 27

First full week of June. Things are bad. I’m stuffed up. Like Monsieur Le Guillotin, I’m wondering about ways to slice off my own head again. Don’t worry - I say this every year. Sammy thinks it’s ‘melodramatic’.

It’s like it’s all building up inside your head - a slowly squeezing pressure of mucus growing in the spaces between your skull and your brain, pushing like an inflating balloon.

You’d think a sneeze or two would help let it out, but somehow that dragonish burst of fire just makes things worse. And it’s never just a sneeze or two - it’s a volley of three, four… five explosions that cover you, your hands, your t-shirt, your tissues in sticky green snot. And still your head’s foggy.

Worse though because now your throat’s on fire. And not in a nice, just-had-a-lovely-spicy-curry way either - no, it’s more like you’ve somehow inhaled sandpaper.

Eyes too. Mine are watery. I mean it looks like I’ve been punched repeatedly in the face. Two red slits glisten with tears behind my glasses, and the world in front of them swims like water on a windscreen.

I always complain, don’t I? I mean it is awful. I don’t like that this short period of time arrives each year and turns me into Mr Hyde. It’s very unbecoming - worse for the way I handle it. I feel as though the ‘good’ thing to do is just to suffer and shut up and be thankful, as though it were character-building. But honestly, it really is bad. Every year. First full week of June. Bad.

Interesting comparison I guess with the Jekyll and Hyde thing. I got the impression that Hyde was a sort of subset of Jekyll, rather than an augmented monster. He was what remained when all the goodness and morality was taken away - Hyde is in all of us, probably the thing Stephenson was getting at.

If it’s a good analogy, it means this dragon-snot-monster is in me: caged for 50 weeks of the year, set loose, raw and angry, by the drifting pollen, but inside me. Bleugh. Horrible thought. Nobody likes being exposed.

After all, what if the cage has other weaknesses? What if there are other situations that could loose Mr Hyde on an unsuspecting world? What if I’m very angry and I’m two thoughts and two scenarios away from turning into the monster without the hay fever?

Question for another time, I reckon. For now, I’ve got to find a way to sail above the season and not be so scratchy. And in any case, it can’t be more than a week or two before things get a lot easier, right?