Sniffles

[poliphilo]

Ailz says I can't have hay fever because it's the wrong time of year, but there must be something in the natural environment I'm allergic to because I seem to get the sniffles at the start of every Spring. They came on me last night in the wolf hours when everything seems desperate and insurmountable- and I wrestled with them for an hour or so before getting up and making myself a cup of tea and spending an hour with a good book.

I'm reading Conan Doyle's People of the Mist- in which the heroes of The Lost World- Prof Challenger et al-  become converts to Spiritualism. It's not so much a novel as a fictionalisation of Doyle's own adventures in psychical research. The chapter about the haunted house is terrific.