Cat scratch fever...

Argh! How stupid are kittens? I just got a bedroom floor painted and who should walk in, around and on every floorboard? That's right, little Larry. Larry's got white paws. I was using black paint. Not a good combination. We whisked him downstairs for emergency cleansing and got a few claws in the skin as a result. Thinking that turpentine substitute might not do a feline's paws a lot of good, I'd organised a post-turps relaxing slipper bath, with a Lush bath bomb*. Larry upended it all over the kitchen floor, flew out of my arms, landed in the puddle of his own making and scarpered in several directions at once, as if he was in a cartoon. Such fun.

M's play went down well and there was a good turnout. She had a meeting today and I killed two hours by heading to the Old English Gentlemen, which is just a 10 second stroll from Hull New Theatre - predictably, really, it's full of old playbills and frightening 10x8s of actors that have performed across the way. People like Ken Dodd, Sue Pollard and Colin Baker. I was sat in this 'theatre' pub in the shadow of Gareth Hunt. It's quite unnerving having a legend of Cockney rhyming slang staring down at you. Apparently, this nice little pub was the first in Hull to have a fruit machine - in 1966 - following some peculiar wheelings and dealings (70 other public houses had been refused the necessary paperwork). As well as a 200 year-old double fireplace, the playbills and loads of walking canes fixed on the walls, the Old English Gent has lovely toilets, described, as you can read when stood at a urinal as there are framed press clippings hanging above, by an ex-landlord as "Rolls Royce lavatories with a pub attached".

*That bit about the Lush bath bomb is a lie.