Allergies

Allergies are funny things… I am sitting here typing this with an itchy left eye, which means that the pollen has started, it is uncomfortable, however it will be easily solved once I get to a chemists and pickup some Piriton, in addition pollens help flare up my asthma and eczema, I stayed with my Mother for a while whilst I was suffering a bit of misery, and could barely walk after about a week because of all the trees she has around the house. The best my asthma and eczema have ever been was when I was living in the smog of London .

On Saturday I went to a chums flat, and his lady friend made some very pleasant snacks, pinwheels, crudités, halloumi wrapped in pancetta which were all very toothsome, and some backed mushrooms with garlic and cream cheese, they were supposed to have some pesto in them as well, the ingredients included cashew nuts, against which I have another allergy so that was left out, so the taste was mainly of grilled mushrooms. As the evening went on my tummy started to swell (or at least feel as if it were swelling) and I became most uncomfortable, in fact I had to make my excuses and leave. I remembered as I was driving home, having let my belt out a couple of notches, that I have never liked baked/grilled or raw mushrooms, and I am guessing that they were the cause of my discomfort, Oysters have the same effect on me, and they used to be one of my favourite things, Mater took me to Whitstable for my birthday once, and I have half a dozen oysters, and had to get rid of them quite quickly.

On the other hand, if I eat nuts my lips go all buzzy, and my throat constricts, as a good allergy is supposed to me. I have known about this for over 38 years, and so I avoid nuts.

There was an article recently on how doctors were desensitising children to peanuts by exposing them to small amounts and then increasing that by a small amount each day. Funnily enough this is what I have done with a number of things, not ones that I am violently allergic to, but things like eggs and bread which does make life easier. However it does seem that for most things I would need to start off smaller than one egg or one slice of bread, after all I was around the trees for a long time and my reaction never really decreased, my steroid intake went up instead. Although now I think of it I did have an oyster at the Fat Duck and didn’t have a reaction to it.

I don’t really understand why I can have three (or maybe four) different reactions to different allergens.

Actually, whilst I am on the subject of allergies I am going to vent on my worst of all time.

When I was about 12 I went on a diet where all one could eat for two weeks was, Cod, Lamb, Broccoli, and Pears, and all one could drink was distilled water, these being the things that fewest people were allergic to. One can get very bored of steamed cod and steamed broccoli very quickly. After that one could add a new food a week, and see if one had a reaction to it, I particularly remember the week when soya beans were added as uninspiring.

Anyway that was not the bad diet. When I was about 5 the doctor decided that I must be a coeliac, I think it was the flavour of the month at the time, anyway this meant that I could not eat any baked goods, excepting “gluten free” bread, and cake. The cake was very nice, the bread, one had to get the bread from the chemists, it was in a red tin, and it is still one of the most revolting things I have ever tasted, I LVOE bread, I love the texture and the taste, this stuff came out of the tin stale, dry, and just horrible. I coped with this diet until I was about 11. When somehow it was discovered that I was allergic to gluten, now you may thing that “gluten free” would be OK for me, you would be wrong “gluten free” was created for coeliacs of whom I was not one, and they have no reaction to a small amount of gluten, whereas me, I may as well have been eating normal bread all the time. /whinge

Shops and my town

Another quiet week, working Monday to Friday, a distinct lack of excerise, so no weight loast again, although my shopping this week should help me a bit.

So again I digress, what is life like living on the borders of Surrey, Middlesex, and Berkshore? Well to me it seems normal, since apart from my two visits to University I have always lived here.

My town was blessed to have two university campuses, one of them has now left, but the other has taken over its buildings. Having so many students means that the town can support supermarkets, not necessarily a wonderful thing, however in so many places one has to drive to an out of town superstore. We have three supermarkets, with a fourth having been granted planning permission, and a fifth masquerading as a garage.

So we have a Tesco (UKs largest supermarket chain, cheap and relatively cheerful), and Iceland (specialising in frozen foods, but with some non frozen staples), a Budgens (Open 24x7x365 for at least 11 years, a little pricy, but otherwise very similar to Tesco), Waitrose will be opening in a few years (the supermarket I normally shop at, more expensive, but generally better quality and flavour), and we have a Marks' and Spencer in a garage (The most expensive, and best quality supermarket, being in a garage it is even more expensive than normal, I buy my lunchtime salads at one of their branches).

However we have no butcher, greengrocer, bookshop or baker in town :-( Just an astonishing number of restaurants only three of which are chain (and apart from one posh chain).

One of the things that I enjoy when I go abroad is looking round a supermarket, it seems to show something of the local culture, although looking at the different supermarkets we have over here I guess that view could be very different depending on which supermarket I go to.

Apart from that we have some charity shops, some jewellers, two shoe shops, a pet shop, a few estate agents, a Chinese herbalists, a few pubs, banks, building societies and a few nick-nack shops.

I suppose that this makes the town sound a little dull, and maybe it is, however it is quite a nice place to live.

I think that this is probably enough to write for one entry, maybe if I have another quiet week I may continue on to me!

A morning in the life

Anyway… I could answer some of the questions that people have asked me (the rims were Ok, I was surprised by that).

Or I could put down facts about myself (Hey! I went to Uni in London as well! And I used to love the Saturday nights down at ULU :-) )

Or I could give you some info about the UK (Every town or village has a war memorial for those who died in the two world wars from that area, the one I went to is a little differernt, it is in place of a gravestone for those whose bodies have not yet been found)

Instead...

I have realised that I have come across as a bit of a whinging pom. In reality I am an optimist, they say that optimists whine more than non optimists because they expect the world to be perfect and are disappointed when it is not. Sometimes I am disappointed, however in most cases I am amused, so many things go well for me every day that I tend not to note them, and instead focus on the negative.

For example yesterday I awoke at 05:15, ambled around the flat, brushed my teeth and myself, dressed in a very fetching white T and green jumper, took the OT quizzes, and left at 07:00, the car started, stalled once at some traffic lights, but started immediately again and there were no more problems, the drive in was not stressful and the traffic flowed well, Listened to a mix CD as Sir Terry is on holiday, I know one is not supposed to, however I do enjoy singing along in the car, I arrived in the office for about 08:10, logged in on the lappie, and then went to the canteen for a cup of porridge which was lovely, back to my desk, a quick chatette with the people around me, and down to work, no hassling e-mails, just a testing plan, and a project plan for my new role to do, a meeting that went quickly and wasn’t too boring.

I did have to eat two salads as the top had come off of one. (I have been buying Monday to Thursdays lunches on Monday lunchtime and leaving them in the car, where it is cold, and then bringing them into the office on the appropriate day) anyway, the chicken curry and lentil salad was open, and the smoked salmon nicoise was open, no idea how that happened. Anyway I threw away the curry and ate the salmon and the tuna with edamame that was todays salad. This is not a bad thing as I have been getting a little peckish in the afternoons, and this will prevent that.

So all in all a good day so far? True, however if I were to write down what happened in a diary or blog I would say “I got 4/10 on a quiz on Roman History” As outside of work this is my specialist subject (if I have one) tbh a lot of the questions were about the eastern empire, and I tend to cut off at Constantine where the middle ages officially start. However I was hoping for a good result on that quiz, although I did win the score was lower than I liked.