I want to rip off my head and replace it with another one.

And it is all because summer has arrived. The season of beer gardens, ice creams, sunbathing - and hay fever.

How, I ask you, did I manage to get through the first 20 years of my life without succumbing to the hideousness which is hay fever, only to be plagued by it every year since?

Apparently it is something to do with different kinds of pollen popping up at different times. Well, I wish they wouldn't.

I'm starting to consider driving without the windows open in case I start sneezing as soon as I take a breath of fresh (?) air. This is a desperate measure as I don't have air conditioning and might boil to death, but I'm almost willing to take the risk.

I get home from work and want to open all the windows in the house, but is it worth being cool if my vision is the price I have to pay?

Streaming eyes and a red nose are not attractive qualities. It is only lunchtime and already I look like I've been crying non-stop like a freak show. I'm starting to wonder why I bother to wear make-up in this weather when my mascara is likely to last about five minutes.

And yes, I take drugs. A lot of them make me so drowsy I forget what I'm doing. Others don't seem to completely rid me of the symptoms.

Clarityn is my hero. It works.

But hay fever sometimes catches me off-guard. What am I supposed to do? Take Clarityn every day for the rest of my life just in case I'm having a bad hay day?

I want to go out into the world and enjoy the sun. I want to lie in fields and do outdoor things - dance around with sheep and feed horses and the like.

I don't want to be confined indoors - a prisoner to the rest of the world - every morning and early evening for the next three months.

I'll remember this when winter arrives. I will not moan about dark mornings and rainy days. I will not be annoyed when I can't get into my car because the locks are frozen, and I shall embrace de-icing.

Roll on November.