How Sez Sees It

According to reports 2016 is a particularly bad year for hay fever sufferers. This is something to do with the fact that we had a warm and wet winter and spring and it created the perfect conditions for more tree pollen. The other problem appears to be that the trees are late flowering and this has clashed with the flowers and the grass pollen. Certainly in the last few days the pollen count where I live has ranged from moderate to high. The trouble is that I only realised I had hay fever a few years ago. I had just started a new job and one of the managers was retiring. Our office had so many flowers in it we could have opened our own florists! I developed an itchy nose and throat and really gunky eyes. I developed hay fever. Since then I have noticed that I get a bad bout every other year. Apparently there are certain trees, like the Birch , that have two yearly cycles of really intense pollen and 2016 is one of those years. I have to say that this year I have been especially ba...

Continuing the theme of things I have learned this week here are some things I have learned this week: 1. Dropping the wheels of a holdall on your toe will result in blood spurting out and you potentially losing a nail. Also you will walk funny all week because of the INTENSE PAIN! 2. People are often surprised by the obvious. This week there were several arrests of top FIFA officials ahead of the election for president (likely to be Sepp Blatter...again) for fraudulent activity. The arrests were made by the FBI in the USA. The world went a bit crazy over the 'crisis' and there was wall-to-wall coverage. I was not surprised at the allegations. It was amazing that it took so long for any of them to be arrested, but I thought it was well known that there were underhand and fraudulent goings on in FIFA. At the time of writing, Sepp Blatter himself has not been accused. I personally think that the most surprising thing was that a country like the USA, who has no apparent big in...

It is customary this time of year to look back at all the things we have done and all the things we are going to do in the future. I am no exception so here is what I remember about this year. January: I started the year all nervous because I had a job interview. It happened to be the day that the rain began to fall and caused a load of flooding. Needless to say I did not get the job. The person who did get the job no longer does the job. Ok then. February: The floods drained away and I was able to make it into Southampton to see the favourite one...aka, Luke Lucas (alright, that isn't his real surname but it is the one he goes by on stage). My favourite band had announced their split the year before and this was their farewell tour. Luke gained a unicorn t-shirt and I gained a right laugh. Then I took a trip to Bristol and pretended I wasn't actually stalking him (ok I actually wasn't but it was a long way to go for one gig). Dave and I stayed there and met some lo...

"How dare they assume I would use my phone as a phone!" I roared in the office a moment ago (or several depending on when you read this...) Over the last two days I have had 20 phone calls (and counting) from a variety of numbers, but all the same company. They never state who they are, but they say they are calling from O2 to offer me an upgrade. This might be ok...if I was due to upgrade! As it is I did this a couple of months ago. Anyone that knows me will remember that my old mobile handset was playing up so I upgraded to the excellent Samsung Galaxy S5 a couple of months before I was due to upgrade. I was even happy to pay a little extra in order to do this at the time. I just wanted a working phone and that is what I got (and more, it is a good handset...but enough about that). Then, two days ago as stated, I started getting the annoying calls. They never seem to stay ringing long enough for me to pick up and speak to anyone and they never seem to leave a voice m...

For some reason I always like to start a new year stressing myself out. Be it with a job interview, house hunting or just getting worked up over people that don't deserve it. Rather than taking everything as a new opportunity to be enjoyed and liked, I have this weird compulsion to just make myself feel very stressed and angry before I settle into a new year. I have no idea why I would behave like this and it can in no way be of any benefit to me. So why do I do it? Maybe that is all just down to my own personality. I am what we call 'one of life's great worriers'. I worry about everything! Just ask my fiance! Dave (fiance) on the other hand does worry, but in a different way. I am very vocal about my worrying and I display physical signs, such as not eating or sleeping. Dave is very calm and quiet and considers the situation. I feel he usually comes out of anything better than I do. So why are we both such different characters when it comes to worrying about stuf...

I was feeling down lately so I thought I would try coming off of Twitter. I know what you are going to ask...how down? Then, why twitter? Well for about as long as I can remember I have had periods of real lows. I don't just mean feeling a little down in the dumps, I mean full on I could throw myself in front of a bus moments. This got worse (through reasons that don't need discussing here) and became full on depression about 6 years ago. I dealt with the worst of it, but it comes and goes in bouts. Now for the reason why Twitter as opposed to Facebook or Tumblr or some other social networking site. Facebook has a lot of family and close friends on it. People who I care about and who deeply care about me. They would notice if I wasn't around. Plus, I like talking to people on there. The messages can be as long or as short as you like and my personal experience is generally a good one on that website. Then there is Tumblr. That website is just a crazy world full of fando...

Events where I was told off for not being sympathetic to superstitious people today got me thinking. What is the point of superstition nowadays? Don’t get me wrong, I understand where it came from. The idea that a curse or bad luck could be gained from behaving a certain way makes total sense in terms of the medieval world. There was a lack of understanding of why certain events happened the way they did. There was a lack of knowledge about the natural world. Of course you could be cursed by that weird woman who lived on her own down the street. Of course you could get bad luck from doing something like break a mirror. If you don’t understand why something happens you can easily come up with stories about it. Also superstition can give you an excuse. If something goes wrong you can say that it is down to the fact that you broke that mirror last week or you put those new shoes on the table. It couldn’t possibly be down to your own error or just some genuinely unfortunate...