I have finally finished my essay and I’m right down to the wire – the deadline is tomorrow morning so I won’t get any sleep for worrying whether my car will break down or I’ll be eaten by a lion in the middle of the night or I’ll be struck down with some terrible disease that pins me to my bed and won’t allow me to get up, get out and hand in the bloody thing. That’s not to mention what happens if my alarm doesn’t go off, I fall over and get concussed or the chickens pin me down and peck out my eyes.

Can you tell I’m a worrier. I REALLY hate being this close to a deadline.

So, even though I wish I never needed to see a clove of garlic again, here is a pic of the same so you can all share my pain.

Strangely I think this is probably my best pic since I “came back” and it’s a one-shot wonder taken at late o’clock. It is, quite literally, the two things plonked on the side, a bit of paper shoved behind to take out an annoying tile edge line, set to AWB and AV control and away you go.

I’m sure that by tomorrow afternoon I will feel better about them and will probably even want to cook with both of them, especially knowing what I know about their supposed medicinal uses. You see the trouble is, it’s all based on folk-lore, some of which is thousands of years old. There are almost no clinical trials and no “modern science” to back it all up. The problem surrounds spending money on clinical trials for things that you can’t protect through the patent system. No-one will bite the bullet and conduct trials because then they open the way for every Tom, Dick and Harry to bring out copycat drugs and reduce the trial company’s money making opportunities. So, while there are lots and lots of folks who believe that turmeric is a potentially revolutionary treatment for a range of cancers and other illnesses, it’ll never be proven.

For all that, there’s no harm in cooking with turmeric once a week just in case……….