Diary of a Shopkeeper, 3rd July
Rain is beating on the window of the shop. We’ve had to close the door, as the water hurling itself down from the sky was bouncing in off the path and making a puddle by the home brew shelves. It’s early July, and the weather is unseasonably cold and wet.
My guilty secret is that rain makes me happy.
I’m a sufferer, you see, of the pettiest, most trivial, least sympathy-worthy medical condition. No one brings you flowers (thank goodness) or get well soon cards. They’re more likely to look at you sceptically and blether on about lawn mowers as if you hadn’t spoken. We all have a cross to bear, and mine is a cross made of anemophilous gametes – microscopically small haploid sex cells, produced by monocotyledon plants and borne on the wind.
In other words, grass pollen.
Ah yes, I’m talking about hay fever. And as I write the phrase, I know 80% of readers will be thinking, ‘I can’t believe he’s moaning about something so petty and trivial. Hundreds of words about a few sneezes! Probably just an excuse not to cut the grass!’
The other 20%, though, will have more sympathy. Because it’s estimated that up to one in five people suffer from allergic rhinitis, to use its scientific name. That’s a lot of red, itchy eyes, simultaneously blocked and runny noses, and sinusy sore heads.
One of my earliest childhood memories is lying in the back of the family Renault 4 with a tartan blanket over my head. We were helping a farmer friend take his hay in. Well, my parents were helping, us kids were mostly running about amongst the small oblong bales, which gradually got hefted onto a trailer and driven away. But after half an hour, my eyes were so itchy and swollen I could hardly see. My nose was blocked solid, but ceaselessly running. No doubt I was constantly giving the ‘Allergic Salute,’ an unconscious upwards wipe of the nose that both shifts the drips and clears the airways for a few seconds. That was only a momentary relief. Invisible pollen had defeated me, and I retreated to the back of the car to cover my head and block out the cruel summer air.
For the next fifteen years I experimented – or the doctor and chemist experimented on me – with various tablets, tonics, and injections. There was a period of three or four years when I had to get jabbed several times a season with a powerful vaccine that was meant to be a miracle cure.
I can confidently report there is no miracle cure. And that includes eating local honey and chive flowers. Been there, done that, got the soggy hankies to prove it. In my experience, many things can help a little, different medicines and natural remedies working better for different people. For me, a combination of eye-drops and nasal sprays offer most relief. But if stuffing your nostrils with garlic and bathing in nettle tea works for you, go for it. The other things you could try is getting older. For some reason sufferers tend to experience fewer symptoms after they hit 50. There has to be some compensation!
Given my sensitivity to pollen, it was probably a mistake to choose to live in Stenness, surrounded by thousands of acres of grass. That’s why you won’t see me out and about much in the summer. I’ll be inside practising the best cure of all: avoidance. And if my cabin fever starts to exceed my hay fever, and I do go out for a walk, I’ll wait till it’s raining. Pollen hates rain: it literally washes it out of the air and down to the ground.
Oh, rain makes me very happy.
This diary appeared in The Orcadian on 6th July 2022. A new one appears weekly. I post them in this blog a few days after each newspaper appearance, with added illustrations., and occasional small corrections or additions.