I have craved summer, and now it’s here, I am delighted to have bright sunshine and blue skies, but there is a price that I pay every year, and that is in the form of hay-fever.

Hay-fever is the British way of saying ‘pollen allergy’. Certain plants leave me with a runny nose, sore red eyes, and the constant need to sneeze. Hay-fever medication helps, but it renders me drowsy (even the non-drowsy medication makes me drowsy, how’s that for irony?). Thus, I am faced with a choice: endure the streaming eyes and ceaseless sneezing, or feel woozy and tired all day. Neither option is particularly great.

Eventually the hay-fever does subside. It could do with vanishing a lot quicker, but it does go. Hopefully, come July, I will feel vaguely human again.