I rolled over, opened a crusty eye and spied a floor littered with balled up tissues. I spied one taking a peak out from a slipper and another that must’ve been tossed, at some unknown time during the night, because it seemed to be quite a way away.

You’ve joined me in a grumpy mood. I’m suffering with hayfever and feeling full on harrumph, grrrr, blah, boo, sniff, aghhh, woe is me. I attempted to sit out in the garden for a bar-b-cue recently but could feel the bridge of my nose fugging up; the back of my throat feeling snaggy; my eyes felt like they needed claws to scratch them and inside a little sneezy sprite was screeching, ‘Get inside woman, lock the doors, insulate the windows – what are you thinking sitting outside!?’.

Typing this, my page is full of red underline because I am using a vast array of words that are not ‘proper’. But they are how hayfever makes me feel, ugh and bah and boo back atcha hayfever!

I am by nature rather a smiley type of woman, to the point where it is not uncommon for me to have headaches and cheek ache from smiling. I don’t want to imply that I am some nauseating, naive, bubbly bubblegum type, although my friend Jess does sometimes point out my Pollyanna predisposition (in a fond not foul way), but hayfever is in danger of sapping the sun from my spirit at the moment.

I was always a bit sniffy about hayfever, pardon the pun. I want to take this opportunity to wholeheartedly and unreservedly apologise to anyone to whom I have cast a withering look at when they have complained of such symptoms. I only started suffering about three years ago and use of the word suffering is quite deliberate.

My car is similarly full of balled up tissues and a box of extra soft tissues is waiting in the passenger footwell to be snivelled in to. But get into my car I do, because I love being cosy up at home but I do like to be out and about too, ‘Like horse muck – never off the roads’ as my Dad so charmingly remarks.

We are so lucky living where we live. There is Cosmeston; cliff top walk; the Taff trail; Porthkerry Park; the fields and skate park in Dinas Powys; Sully sea front; Esplanade and Penarth is after all, ‘The Garden by the Sea’. Consequently I don’t want to stay holed up indoors. So I take my one a day hayfever tablet, squirt my nasal spray and ping in my eye drops and off I go, triumph in the face of adversity! I fully appreciate that as adversities go, my hayfever is not on the same level as the suffering endured by many and so for this I must be grateful; grateful for the blessing of general good health, a usually sunny disposition and for living in a place that is so green and gorgeous.