"There's No Place Like Home"

I am sick. After years of coming to India without so much as an upset tummy - despite the odd bit of 'street food' or freshly squeezed juices - I have finally succumbed to the dreaded 'dodgy tummy' syndrome.

Last night, whilst the husband was out listening to live music and making inane conversation with assorted revelers at a local music night, I was making love to our light blue Hindustani toilet.

For a solid two hours of the early dawn, in sweltering heat, I lay prone on our less than spic-n-span loo floor (imagine if you will the kind of toilet you might find in any remote petrol station restroom on an American motor way deep in the middle of nowhere) heaving my poor guts out. I feel like the entire contents of my intestinal system are now, as we speak, lurking in some underground sewer, ready to be made into bottled water to sell unsuspecting tourists (like myself) in the not so distant future.

The husband's parents are here visiting us for two weeks, and as a lark we decided to host a fun little dinner at ours last night. Thanks to three bottles of wine (NO, that is NOT why I am sick) and a bag of imported marshmallows which were toasted and roasted to within an inch of their lives by an ecstatic Egg and a delighted Dumps, the dinner was considered a great success - despite my less than perfect and hastily conjured up pasta salad and the bloody big black dog who nicked half the barbequed chicken from the homemade barbeque just as it finished browning.

And so it was with great dismay that I awoke this morning at 4:30am to find my innards in turmoil. I know this feeling. It is the 'you're millions of miles away from home and might die' kind of feeling, that only the cool soothing hand of a mother stroking your head, or the freshly washed crisp sheets on a pocket-sprung luxury mattress can assauge. Obviously, I had neither.

What I did have however was a totally dead to the world husband and two sweaty little boys with hot, tangled limbs wrapped around my aching body, reminding me that it is actually possible to get a preview of hell here on earth.

After a morning spent lying immovable in a hot, dark bedroom, fan whirring unhelpfully yet annoyingly above, I am feeling marginally better - enough that I can sit upright and type this this moaning missive. I have been listening to Enya on repeat on my little speakers in an attempt to self-soothe - and anything upbeat was making the possibility of further vomiting all too likely. The husband has been dealing with his own issues - having had the pleasant task of de-dumping the Dumps after breakfast, an activity I imagine does not sit so well after having indulged in a repast of omelette and toast.

Yes, the Dumps has regressed ever since his recent bout of sickness. Why deal with foul-smelling loos when you can simply soil your OshKosh undies instead. and have a wipe down by Dada. I'm sure it doesn't take a great deal of imagination to appreciate how utterly trying this is in the unrelenting April Indian pre-monsoon heat ... tempered with off-the-richter-scale humidity levels (we currently shed around 2 lbs of liquid perspiration a day in this heat I reckon).

What I wouldn't give to be in my big old bed back in London, remote control in hand, flipping through silly daytime telly and nibbling on some Kingsmill 'Toastie' toast (sigh).

Instead, I'm sipping tepid bottled water and trying to get enough energy together to merely put my contact lenses in.

I'm hoping that helps my overall state of unwellness, given that right now, through glazed vision, the our blue and pink tiled abode is making me feel like I've landed in a rerun of an old Miami Vice special....well that or a rather down market mental asylum.