Sponsored nose blow

I’m sitting in front of a growing mound of sloppy tissue paper, and I’ve got a wad of it stuffed up my left nostril. There’s an unbearable itch high in my right sinus sphenoidalis, and in all, my olfactory organ is producing around a quart a minute of watery drool. I have developed an allergy.

While for some years now it’s been considered almost a fashion faux pas in the UK not to have some kind of intolerance – nut, lactose, gluten, pesticides, water, bees – I actually had to wait to come here to Argentina where most of your trendy northern allergies have never been heard of. There’s no “Gluten-Free” aisle in our local Coop, and if I tried to insist on nut sensitive labelling on food stuffs, it would probably be enough to get me branded a deviant.

I normally blame my streaming eyes and sneezing fits on the “bloody fruit farmers”, who in my vision of a world run on corporate greed are sure to be chucking all sorts of heinous chemicals into the atmosphere so long as it yields one more apple at harvest time. It’s possible, but it could just as easily be dust mite poo or fever brought on by some distant hay.

Anyway, in the absence of any antihistamine tablets knocking about the medicine cabinet, I thought I’d put my misery to good use by way of a sponsored nose blow. In the time it’s taken me to write this entry, I’ve honked the horn a whopping seven times. I reckon it’s got to be worth about 20p a blow, so someone owes me £1.40. Offers of sponsorship and suggested charitable recipients welcome via the comments box.

PARP!