Exam fever and the Bombay diet

School exams have started in earnest this week in our household. Of course, as always, just when you need to keep cool and concentrate, the weather has decided to climb into the 80s (Fahrenheit) or about 26 (Celsius), so Kay has been sweltering while she revises. Added to that she has had a terrible head cold which is now heading south to her chest, the poor little mite has been struggling to breathe. I have been trying to build her up with brain fodder and anti-virus food, such as salads, fish, blueberries and echinacea tablets. Hopefully that will pay off. The thanks I get for it is that I am now going down with it too. Still, unlike Kay, at least I don't have to bother my fuzzy head with analysis of chemical ions and aldehydes.

Greg meanwhile is now downing the whisky like it is going out of fashion and is currently going through a typical phase of his alcoholism that is oh so familiar - I have seen it many times before in the previous cycles he has been through. When he is well and truly in the grip of alcohol addiction, his appetite starts to disappear completely. He tends to skip breakfast and lunch altogether and only snacks very late in the afternoon, so that by suppertime he says he is not hungry. He declines to eat lunch with us and at suppertime may at best take minuscule portions which would not even fill a two-year-old. He will toy with the food on his plate with his fork and say that it doesn't taste of much....things which under normal conditions he usually relishes. Most of his food then ends up in the bin. At the moment, he is existing mainly on whisky, milk and strange concoctions he makes himself such as bombay mix with salsa sauce! It seems he has to really accentuate the spiciness of his food to get any taste at all. I think the alcohol kills all the little taste buds on his tongue. I am watching out for the next phase which will no doubt follow the usual pattern and develop into the upset stomach/hiccuping phase, followed by the more extreme gastric ulcer/ dash to the hospital phase. This morning he got up retching. Surprisingly that only starts to happen when his liver really has had really more than it can take. I've been there before. Watch this space.