You can't go back. But I will always believe that the more you are exposed to as a child, the less allergies/sensitivities you will have as an adult Growing up in a less than sterile environment pays dividends later.

Which is why our house gets cleaned once a year whether it needs it or not!!

You can get it all over Maine, it's a tad bit more pricey than regular farmers market honey, but a hell of a lot cheaper than it is down here in Mass

I find not having guests make that a lot easier to attain

Somewhat circular .....

"flippin 'eck, we're not going back there - place was filthy"

Yup - this all sounds familiar! But although it's been bad, nothing compares to not teaching anymore in favour of being healthy - being exposed to 300 snotty noses from around the country at the start of every term was automatic illness forever.

Sophie, being exposed to any snot nosed kids is a below average day.

Haha! I was going to say "except my own" but no, actually, especially my own.

Worse.

We learned just yesterday that SWMBO is allergic to pretty much everything.

Not sure if that I clues me!!

Now starts the process of working with the allergy wallah to find out if there is a single root allergen that's caused all of this... Apparently it explains all her other ailments...

To be fair this may have started back in Blighty, in which case being here really antagonised it something nasty... It really went bad when she came back from seeing her parentage back in March.

The air quality here in the Valley area sucks. It's awful.

This is probably a silly question but what is a SWMBO? Allergies do seems bad here. I've just started with lingering watery eyes and a cough that vie had for months. I'm putting it down to allergies as I feel well otherwise.

She Who Must Be Obeyed

(Rumpole of the Bailey)

I agree with this. My childhood incorporated lots of dirt & a fair number of germs. My mum didn't consider house-cleaning deserved a very high spot on her priority list, & any illnesses we kids got were considered a normal part of life, nothing to get bothered about.

When our kids were little, I'd get two or three bouts of bad illness every year, but the husband almost never. Once the kids grew up & moved out of the house, my health improved nicely. We moved to the States late last summer & both of us have been sick only once since (some kind of bad gastroenteritis). So I don't think our immune systems have changed much due to the country shift.

I love this theory. Unfortunately I have one child who's allergic to dust, so while I aspire to an impressive level of filth around the house, it leaves her suffering.

I've never really understood how I managed to have one child who's allergic to everything and two who are allergic to nothing. It makes me think that actually it's more about genetics and less about environment. Either that or I did something during her pregnancy that I didn't do during the other two pregnancies - had flu at the wrong moment perhaps?