On my desk at work I keep a box of tissues, of the quick-draw type which always has one tissue sticking out of the top so that it can be extracted and moved into position in about half a second if I feel an unexpected sneeze coming on.

This just happened (bah, summer). So my eyes began to close involuntarily as they do when you sneeze, and I rapidly grabbed for the protruding tissue, snatched it out of the box and held it in front of my face. Achoo.

Then I opened my eyes, and was rather bemused to find a section of my desk completely covered in inexplicable unidentified white fluff. Huh? I'm sure I'd have known about it if I'd been carrying that lot around in my nose!

I can only assume the fluff must have been lurking inside the tissue box, owing to some sort of manufacturing defect; perhaps it was a proto-tissue which had somehow skipped the step of being bound together into one sheet. So, presumably, it wasn't the sneeze that scattered it all over my desk but the act of yanking out the tissue which was next to the fluff in the box.

But it was very disturbing for about a minute, because my eyes were already shut when I grabbed for the tissue; so all I was consciously aware of was that I sneezed, opened my eyes, and the desk was covered in inexplicable fluff. That's not something you want to see when you haven't finished your first cup of coffee yet!