It appears that I am allergic to moving. Well, to packing anyway.

We started the big pack over the long weekend and as a result I have been sneezing and blowing my very drippy nose while trying to avoid rubbing my itchy eyes all weekend. And although I�m now in the office it hasn�t calmed down much at all, though I�m waiting for the drugs to kick in at the moment.

I have always been a victim of allergies, regularly struck down by the twin spawns of Satan, dust and pollen. Though usually only in that pollen-happy season, Spring.

However our house, with its large old rooms and extremely high ceilings, gathers dust at an almost unbelievable rate. Not quite so fast that you put down a plate and it�s immediately covered in dust, but wait 36 hours and it won�t pass the white glove test.

Most of the time that is a hassle rather than a medical crisis, but as soon as any of that dust is stirred up I am reduced to a sneezing sniffling mess, often incapable of speech.

As I have been for the better part of the last four days. We started by cleaning out the garage. And I use the word �garage� advisedly, because it hasn�t had a car in it in the six and a half years I�ve been in the house, and a more appropriate description is �storage room/junk heap�.

The contents of the �garage� included three dead single bed mattresses, two dead washing machines, two dead televisions, a large box filled with old herbs and spices, a desk, three rubbish bins, a rotten lounge suite, an inordinate number of cardboard boxes in all shapes, sizes and states of repair, one box filled with my old uni notes that I�d forgotten existed, three CD racks and approximately 25 archive boxes full of Betty's books, notes and other bits and pieces which now have to be moved and restored somewhere else.

Plus dust. And leaves. And most of a Ivy plant.

Sneeze-o-rama. We did however get it pretty well cleaned up. �Cleaned up� being all the junk that can go to the tip at one end, and all the stuff we want to keep � desk, boxes for packing and boxes of books and notes � at the other.

I even swept up the leaves. By that point I couldn�t breathe or see, so I figured I couldn�t do any more damage by making it neat.

Then, yesterday, I moved on to putting some of the unearthed packing boxes to work. I started with the piles of old magazines I had taking up unnecessary space and threw out about 40 back editions of things like Vanity Fair that I don�t know why I kept for so long to begin with. I boxed up and few things and cleared up other stuff, and all in all I think I did pretty well because I threw out more things than I put in boxes. We even managed a run to the Red Cross bin to get rid of some old clothes.

But all of that also stirred up the dust in my room, and the sneezing continued.

So perhaps the thing I�m most looking forward to about the new apartment is the relative lack of dust generating capability. Also the fact I don�t have to find space for half as many boxes of crap as Betty. Also, no slugs in the kitchen. But that�s a whole other story.