Today is dry and windy. I might go out later but the pollen count is very high. I’m allergic to grass pollen. It started when I was a child, I would wake up with ‘sleep in my eyes’ gunged up with mucus. Then I did a painting in situ in the school playing fields, I was drawing and painting a van dumped on the field. In the week it was there I sat and drew it most lunchtimes. By the end of that week I had full blown hay-fever! I think it was because the grass was really tall and was distributing pollen.

Nowadays there are much better antihistamines, eye drops and nasal sprays. Thank goodness, the situation without them would be horrible. I walked past a garden full of overgrown grass a few years ago and I could not breathe! Sneezing, running eyes, all of the symptoms. I had to buy hay-fever tablets straight away to calm it down.