Oh the irony!

I was one of the lucky ones – I grew up in a place where it was warm and sunny most of the time, sometimes very hot and rarely uncomfortably cold. During the summer the sun would actually be out all the time, we could count on dry days and the weather was basically never an issue.

As you know I moved to the UK a few years ago and basically this is a country that has never really embraced me. From the dismal weather to the uninspired food to the cultural shock, it hasn’t been very easy to love the place. The biggest issue for me is the weather – as I see it it’s 11 months of waiting for summer and one month of huge disappointment, with a few rare sunny days overall. It’s very frustrating.

What’s the worst part? When the sun DOES come out and the weather is pleasant I just want to run outside and spend as much time as possible enjoying the sun, the warmth, the lovely feeling of not being cold… but I can’t. The final insult in this sorry saga is that in the UK I have also developed hay fever. It is the ultimate torture – to have to sit inside on the few precious days of sunshine because, if I don’t, I feel like my eyes are on fire, my throat incredibly itchy and my nose so stuffed that I can not take a deep breath.

How incredibly unfair is that??

I never had hay fever prior to living in the UK and, in fact, only seem to have developed it in the last 5 years or so (it’s hard to tell because I may have thought I had a never-ending cold before that, seeing as I didn’t know what hay fever was like). It is akin to that proverbial straw that so annoyed that camel – I just can’t stand it. I have of course tried all the drugs and treatments and some work better than others but I still get days when I want to rip my eyes out of my sockets and rinse them under the tap to get some relief.

I freeze for 10 months hoping for nice warm days and when they come, I’m allergic to them. I can’t even run outside as I will pay for it dearly with bright red eyes and feeling like crap. In an evil, ironic twist I sometimes find myself wishing for rain – I hate rain - just because this is the one thing that can settle the pollen down and make me feel better!

All of last weekend the weather was so-so but the few moments of warm sunshine I had to retreat inside: my nose hasn’t stopped running and my head feels like it’s stuffed with cotton. I have to stay inside and watch others have fun or brave the outside and then feel miserable. Needless to say I am in a very grumpy mood and am planning ways to move to a warm country I’m not allergic to.