Thursday, August 24

A couple of times a week, soon after finishing my dinner, I am wracked by a sneezing fit - between a dozen and fifteen explosive sneezes with teary eyes and massive amounts of phlegm in my throat.  Not a very pleasant subject I agree but it's been happening for years and I've never been able to identify the trigger.  I suspect it might be food-related, but we've thought about links with afternoon sun coming from the wrong angle, a cold breeze coming from opening the freezer, or some unidentified pollen infiltrating the room.  But none of these fit.

The human body is certainly affected by triggers.  Things we see on TV send our minds back to our childhood, a person's mannerisms can remind us of someone we met years ago, and thought we had forgotten.  Hearing particular songs can be evocative of experiences we had previously.  I heard Daryll Braihwaite singing Horses the other day and I thought of a particular party I had gone to.  Neil Diamond songs always trigger memories of our flat in Homebush in the early 1970s.  The Beatles' song I Wanna Hold Your Hand reminds me of a camp at Bundeena.

Smells are particularly powerful triggers - the smell of cooking, or a particular perfume can unlock recollections of childhood.  The smell of boot polish always takes me back to polishing my new winkle-picker shoes ready for the first time I wore a dinner suit.

I have to be careful when I smell a cup of coffee because it triggers me to reach for a biscuit and my diet doesn't allow that any more, but the oddest trigger which I have to deal with is when I clean my teeth.  When the first tang of peppermint meets my tongue or gums I have an uncontrollable urge to go to the toilet - even if I have just been.  Like the dog marking his territory, I have to squeeze out just a couple of drops, just so the urge is satisfied.