Monthly Archives: May 2009

The pollen effect hasn’t been so bothersome today, at least, not to me.  So I’ve made up for the sleep loss by double napping–late morning and late afternoon.

Dolly is disgusted.  She does a really good disgusted.  I’m so glad to have been of service.

Like the gennelman he is, Graham yielded on the coffee table and went off to find something from the same period but much more to my taste.  Then he discovered that the best quote for carting it down to Wales from Leeds is in the region of £60.  ”I’m not paying that,” he said.  ”Time for Plan B.”

“Great!” I said.  ”What’s Plan B, then?”

“I don’t know yet, but it’ll be a really good one when I work it out.”

“Of course.  Aren’t they all?”

And then I made a nice pot of tea.

The postman brought two packets of inkjet ink for my HP printer/scanner/copier.  I left them temptingly on the top of the printer, hoping that Graham might rise to the challenge;  he’s better at these things than me.

So now I have multi-coloured ink stains on my hands.  Quite artistic, really.

And now, the afternoon done and evening well on the way, I’m going to pour myself a glass of sauvignon blanc (cheap white wine from Chilé, whaddya fink, I’m some kind of millionaire or summink?)  and go watch TV.  We settled on re-watching the complete set of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, one episode each day.  That’ll take us into late Autumn, I reckon. Ghoulies, and ghosties, and sharp-fanged children of the night…

We decided to ignore our usual Bank Holiday stay-at-home practice today and go out regardless.  Monday is our domestic shopping day, and nothing was going to divert us from the routine.

Frankly, I was dreading it.

But, the roads were quiet, Swansea was close to empty and even the supermarket was pretty close to Sunday levels.  Clearly, the masses had decided to take advantage of a lovely sunny day and had herded themselves off to the seaside.  Or stayed a’bed.

The pollen invasion has switched frequency and I now have a permanent resin reaction in my nose, slightly burning, sore lungs, and eyes that will cry copious tears at the least excuse.  I’ve been recommended to try using a soft facial filter mask and shall get a pack next time I’m in Boots the Chemists.  Might be too late for this year but there’s always next.

On the bright side, the last time I experienced pollen attack at this level of intensity it was followed by a glorious summer.

Which does sound awfully nice.

Graham’s set his sights on a 1960s tile-topped coffee table, declaring it to be beautiful.  His eyes and mine behold it differently, I’m sad to say, and to me the 12 tiles comprising the top are boring and mechanical in the extreme, rather like something you’d draw on a dull Sunday afternoon with a kid’s Spirograph set.  I shall have to find a gentle, non-confrontational way of persuading him to a different course;  if I fail I shall have to throw myself on the floor and lay there kicking and howling until my view prevails.

It’s the height of the tree pollen season here at the moment.  Mustn’t complain because I love the deep fertile green of the trees now that they’re in full leaf.  I could wish for them that they’d not go into major pollen production mode at night time, though.  My poor tubes felt like they were growing a year’s supply of yeast last night.

I finished watching the boxed set of Stargate Atlantis a couple of evenings back and now my days have a hole in them.  I know that a lot of folks don’t much enjoy Atlantis–Graham calls it ‘mud huts in the sky’–but I do and the team have become family, almost.  More so than SG-1.  I need to search through the cupboard for another set to play, one a day, until something good comes along.  Might be time for Northern Exposure again.

We’re hunkering down for a hot spell now, or some time in the next few weeks, and I hope to persuade Graham to look out all the electric fans we own before it becomes an emergency.  We have classic ornamental desk fans in several rooms but I shall need rather more than that.  In particular I shall need the small, almost silent one, that creates a gentle current of air in the bedroom.  At least this year I have no reason whatever to go out or to do anything strenuous in the heat of the day.

I shall do my best not to complain. Unless I can find a way to make my complaints amusing.

I had one of those unsettling dreams last night.  It took place a while after some cataclysmic sickness had more than decimated the population.  We were comfortable enough, having weathered the storm safe at home, and the working teams had long since cleared all the wreckage of abandoned cars and random corpses from the cities and towns.  I was called up to London to attend some kind of meeting, and chose to drive myself up in a very posh open top Audi sports model.  The city was deserted.  I parked the car in the street in South Kensington, pulling the top closed and securing the boot, which was filled with electronic equipment.  The meeting went well and I was taken off to an hotel for an overnight stay, and to attend a dinner.  When I got to the dinner a panic attack struck me, and I was frozen in fear.  ”I don’t have to go in there, do I?” … and then, comforted … I woke up.

Beastly, real dream, and it stuck with me all day, through a late morning solo trip to Swansea, over lunch, and to the very end of my afternoon nap, where it picked up somewhat and re-ran an out-of-sync repeat of the action.

My dreams recently have been exceedingly vivid, taking me back to an odd, surreal world of computers and techo-executives.

I could wish to dream of something else, of flowers, open seas and skies and the singing of birds.

Hey ho.