Both SWMBO and I read a great deal, most often in bed at the end of the day – read into that what you will – and last night was no exception. As usual, whilst she read Alexander McCall Smith’s The Full Cupboard of Life, SWMBO had flung her bookmark somewhere on the duvet where it would scratch my arm annoyingly as I turned the pages of my own tome which I now realise, spookily enough, is The No.1 Ladies’ Detective Agency by the same author. Grabbing said bookmark, I glanced at what was written thereon:
“Summer afternoon – the two most beautiful words in the English language”. ~
Henry James
To which I can only reply:
“Well, you have never been struck down with streaming eyes and constant sneezing that accompanied the worst hayfever attack of your bloody life after brief visit to Hampstead Heath, matey”.
Seriously, can anyone out there enlighten me as to why I can be completely unaffected by hayfever one year and absolutely hammered by it the next?