Bill Harvey: Sniff ’n’ the tears

About a quarter of the UK population suffer from ‘photosneezia’.

As we seem to be surrounded by less than good news at present, I felt duty bound to offer some news as a distraction to our current second wave malaise. You may have picked up a news story over the weekend telling of how researchers at Oxford University are starting a study looking into the phenomenon of photic sneezing, otherwise more eloquently known as photosneezia. This has to be the name of a prog rock album somewhere.

I confess to being one of those people, along with an estimated 25% of the UK, who feel the need to sternutate, or sneeze, in response to bright light, particularly sunlight. I also find that, if I laugh while chewing a fruit sweet, I get shooting pains up one side of my face. When I have mentioned either of these to people in the past, most look at me with a mixture of disdain and sympathy.