Lisa turned to me at 5 o'clock this morning and said this:

"It's a good job we're not at Z's house, sharing a bathroom with people we barely know."

She'd been throwing up since two. It's now ten-thirty, and she still hasn't stopped. Cancelling that trip to Suffolk was the best thing we ever did.

Suffice it to say that the week of surprises is still going strong. We had four (yes, four) fire engines turn up outside yesterday afternoon, and spent an enjoyable half hour watching burly firemen with breathing apparatus climbing the stairs past our flat to put out a blaze on another floor. It was like The Towering Inferno on a budget, and I was Robert Wagner, reassuring Lisa by lying through my teeth. In reality, I wasn't sure what was more likely to kill us: the smoke coming in through our open windows, or the heatstroke we'd get if we closed them.

Fortunately we managed to survive that bit of excitement, but after the night we've had, I'm not sure Lisa's long for this world. She's been vomiting for eight hours, and can't keep anything down. I've phoned the midwife at the hospital, and she's advised me to give Lisa a teaspoon of water every ten minutes, and get some Dioralyte from the chemist. She said to phone them back if any contractions start. I told her not to go there.

If Lisa can't keep down those teaspoons, we're supposed to phone the doctor this afternoon. In the meantime, I'm off to the chemist...

Sometimes, the kindest thing to do with sick animals is to shoot them...

And it seems to have worked a treat. She's perked right up since Thursday. Here's the proof:


Yes, she can open her mouth without vomiting. It's like some kind of medical miracle.

So in an effort to kill or cure, we did indeed take her to Monkey Bizness yesterday. And here's the receipt to prove it...

I'm in the process of e-mailing that document to some of the world's leading cryptographers in an effort to decipher those calculations. The entry fees at Monkey Bizness are £5 for a three-year-old and £1.25 for each adult, making a grand total of £7.50. At which point they gave us an unexplained discount of £2.50, added 75p VAT, and charged us a total of £4.50. I've read that receipt about a dozen times, and I still don't get it.

But I'm not complaining. Amelie had an afternoon of fun, and I got change out of a fiver. Although we spent another twenty on food, drink and ice cream. I've not been to Monkey Bizness before, but I was actually very impressed. It's housed in a big unit on an industrial estate in Lewes, which is not the most welcoming of venues, but once inside they've got loads of stuff to play on, and acres of space for the parents to relax with comfy sofas and free wi-fi.

On the downside, they've got a kind of rainforest/jungle theme going on, and the climate to match. Frankly it was cooler outside in the midday sun. We were reaching for menus within five minutes of arrival - not to order food, but to use as fans. Despite the heat though, we had a lovely couple of hours: me and Lisa chatting, relaxing and nibbling, and Amelie swinging...

... climbing...


... sliding...

... and hammering...

Although I lost her at one point in the ball pool...

It was remarkably quiet too. In fact by 2:30pm, we were the only ones there. Amelie had driven the others away.

We eventually left Monkey Bizness, and went on to my parents' house. They'd kindly offered to have Amelie at short notice to give Lisa a break, and allow her to boost her iron levels over the weekend. Hopefully by pressing my work shirts. It's also given me the chance to take stock of our finances, manage our investments, and work out how we can afford a new baby. So I've put the rent money on Jedward to win Eurovision tonight.

If there's one thing I've always said, it's that life throws up some unexpected surprises. As does Amelie, in a more literal sense. To be honest, everything about this week has been a shock. Not only the jury summons, but also the recurrence of my prostate pain which woke me up at 4am on Wednesday night and stopped my brain working yesterday. Then there was the letter from the bus company exonerating their driver completely, and the card from my aunt to say that she reads my blog every day on her iPhone. She's almost 78. By the time you add in the wave of vomit which swept down the hallway last night, and the fact that I'm at home on a Friday morning, you have quite an unexpected week.

The letter from the bus company arrived on Wednesday, and came straight from the managing director. He informed Lisa that he's "now had an opportunity to fully investigate the journey you had on one of our buses", before casually describing the 28th of April as "that rainy day", in the way you do when you're trying not to accept blame for someone slipping over. He then tells Lisa that he's examined the CCTV footage, and noticed that "you were able to recover yourself quite quickly and take your seat and our driver was not aware of what had happened as at that time he was looking in the offside mirror to pull away from the bus stop and continue the journey".

As it happens, Lisa also cried out in a loud voice, so he must have been deaf too. It's a shame Lisa wasn't, as she could have been spared his swearing later on. Anyway, Roger French, Managing Director of the Brighton and Hove Bus Company, very much regrets that Lisa had this experience. But not enough to give her a free bus ticket or any compensation whatsoever. I think I preferred the letter from my aunt.

Anyway, the reason I'm not currently wrestling diabetics on a Friday morning is because I've taken two days annual leave in order to attend a party in Suffolk. This party to be exact. It's been planned (and looked forward to) for months, but sadly - very sadly - we've taken the decision not to go. The reasons are many and various, and we're blaming it quite a lot on the kittens, but Lisa's also been diagnosed with anaemia, and is feeling as rough as... well, as rough as an anaemic woman who's seven months pregnant in a heatwave. She's struggling to reach the kitchen, never mind East Anglia. So two nights away, and a six hour round trip, just seems too much to bear, and we've been forced to reconsider.

Ironically, however, the events of last night mean that we might not have gone anyway. I picked up Amelie from nursery at 5pm yesterday, and arrived to find her in the garden, in tears. It transpired that she'd just fallen over whilst sprinting across the yard at speed, and had badly grazed her knee and elbow. It took a few minutes to calm her down (and fill in the nursery's accident form), but even as I led her outside to the car, she said to me "Daddy, I just can't stop crying".

So I took her to Asda for some strawberries. They're like therapy for post traumatic stress disorder. Especially if you have five accidents a day. We got home shortly afterwards, I rubbed Savlon into Amelie's wounds, and she seemed fine for the next hour or so. Until five-to-seven, when Lisa led her into the bedroom to choose a story. At which point the projectile vomiting began.

It was a bit like the moment Shimmy gave birth: shocking and slightly distasteful. With no warning whatsoever, Amelie threw up three times in her bedroom and the hallway. She hadn't complained of feeling sick, and yet there we were, standing in a vast lake of vomit. And judging by the quantity, she has a stomach like the tardis. I've never seen anything like it.

Our current view is that it was some kind of heatstroke. She was adamant she hadn't bumped her head, but she had been outside all afternoon in the sun, running about at speed and getting hot. Within an hour she was fine, and she seems back to normal today. In fact, she's consulted a doctor this morning...


... and the only danger to her health appears to be her tendency to block her airways with cellophane. But having spent an hour clearing up vomit last night, I'm not sure I'd want to pack her into the car today for a three hour drive to north Suffolk.

So we're taking her to Monkey Bizness instead. That'll really make her sick.

I'm reaching the point now where the simple act of walking across the living room makes me feel like Indiana Jones in the Well of Souls...

But with cats, rather than snakes, obviously. At this rate, I'll have to use that stool like a lion-tamer just to reach the hallway.

But the good news is that Chloe's not the only one eating the kitten food...

We're now seeing regular threesomes around the tea set saucer. And with the benefit of natural light, I've shot a slightly better video...


That's Amelie slagging off her friends in the background. I'm hoping the laws of slander don't apply to three-year-olds.

Anyhoo, I'd love to write more, but sadly I've just spent the past hour on my hands and knees, trying to get vast quantities of vomit out of the carpet. So my evening's a little behind schedule. I'll be back tomorrow to reveal the source of the sickness. And whether they're human or feline.

Just to prove that it never rains but it pours, I arrived home from work yesterday to find a jury summons waiting for me on the doormat. In my (almost) thirty-nine years on the planet, I've never been called up for jury service, and now they want me to do it the week before Lisa gives birth.

I like to judge people whenever possible, so naturally I'm keen to take part, but sadly, if they want me to do it in late July, there's every chance that instead of delivering the verdict of twelve angry men, I'll be delivering the baby of one angry woman. There could be more contractions than convictions, and the only ward of court will be maternity. So rather than hold up a murder trial by dashing off to the hospital in the middle of the closing arguments, I've filled in the form asking for my jury service to be deferred. It might be the most important civic duty one can perform, but it still comes second to our baby.

It does mean, however, that I'll be called up at some point in the next twelve months. And this time it can't be deferred. So that's something to look forward to. It'll be the quietest week ever on my blog.

In the meantime though, I've got a lot on my plate...

That's Big Kitten moving on from finger food to massive plates of meat. Having written yesterday that we'll be employing the use of a saucer, I realised that we don't actually own any. So I stole that one from Amelie's plastic tea set.

Miraculously, we managed to get all three of them eating from the saucer last night. In fact, with the progress we've made since Sunday, the only thing now standing between us and fully weaned kittens, is their mother's tendency to steal food from under their noses...


The soundtrack to that video is a TV programme about child poverty in Wales. It's the kind of thing I like to watch when I've spent my last penny on cat food for the starving kittens.

Apparently, while I was busy doing a clinic at the hospital yesterday morning, Amelie was at a bus stop down the road with my mother-in-law, entertaining the crowds with this unscripted comedy routine:

Lisa's Mum: Has your Daddy gone to work today?

Amelie: Yes.

Lisa's Mum: He’s always going to work. Is he trying to avoid you?

Amelie: No, he goes to work to earn money to buy me toys.

I'm told that brought the house down. Well, the bus shelter. To be honest, if she's that entertaining, she can do a bit of stand-up and buy her own toys.

On the subject of major financial burdens, the kittens are now four-and-a-half weeks old, so in addition to partying all weekend, we've been attempting to start the weaning process. I assumed that involved waiting until they're four weeks old, and then putting down a bowl of food, but unfortunately there's a lot more to it than that. So since Sunday morning, we've been following these instructions, and getting down and dirty (quite literally) with some cat food.

Shimmy's still feeding the kittens milk...

... but she's also now letting them out to play three or four times a day, which is a sight that ranks about eleven on the 1-10 cuteness scale. Sadly I don't have any footage of it, as every time they're out romping around on the floor, my hands are covered in mashed kitten food. Which makes me reluctant to pick up a camera.

Amelie, however, has found them tempting to the extreme. She had her first kitten-related time-out yesterday, after Lisa found her at the living room door with her hands around a kitten's neck. We've told her that if she touches them, they'll die, which is slightly unkind, but probably has an element of truth to it. Unfortunately, with three to choose from, I think she feels she can afford to kill a couple.

The weaning, however, is going well. Every time the kittens come out to play, Lisa and I dip our fingers in baby cat mousse, and offer it up to them. It's what toddlers call finger food. All three have now got the hang of licking it off, although Shimmy's quite happy to steal food from the mouths of her starving children, and has no qualms about butting them out of the way just to get at it. My Mum was the same with rusks.

Unfortunately the kittens clearly haven't heard the idiom about biting the hand that feeds you. Every weaning attempt quickly develops into a game of cat chicken, where you have to hold your finger there just long enough for the food to be licked off, but not long enough to get bitten. Big Kitten in particular has the bite of a great white shark, and will happily try to take your hand off the moment the food's gone.

We're supposed to be moving on to a saucer in the next day or two, and frankly it can't come soon enough. I want to have enough fingers left to pick it up.

For a long time now, Lisa and I have had a reputation as 24 hour party people, living the hedonistic lifestyle, and appearing at all the top functions on a regular basis. Lisa's like Paris Hilton on a budget, and Amelie's her little princess...

So it will come as no surprise to anyone that we followed up Saturday's big birthday bash by attending another exclusive party yesterday afternoon. This time it was the third birthday of Lorraine's youngest child, Harrison. He was the key witness to this random act of violence. And he's now in a position to talk.

But instead of fleeing social services with our wayward child, we took her to Hove yesterday for Harry's fancy dress party. Amelie went as a medieval princess, so naturally she wanted me to dress up as a wizard. In the end I put on my driving glasses and told her I was Harry Potter. I also did my horrible laugh from page 3 of 'The Princess and the Wizard', which always goes down well. And brings her to the verge of tears. As for Lisa, Amelie wanted her to go as a brave knight, presumably because she's rarely out of her knightwear, and spends most of the day in pyjamas. She eventually settled on her dress from TK Maxx.

So with the three of us suited and booted, we headed for Lorraine's house and took up a handy position by the buffet. Lisa and I remained there for most of the afternoon, while Amelie ran around the garden like a nutter, and attempted to fly head-first down the slide without losing her crown. She came in at one point and asked me if I'd seen her new friend, Ruby. I was eating a cherry bakewell at the time, but when I'd finished, I asked her what Ruby looked like. To which Amelie responded "She has green wings". As distinguishing features go, it's a good one. I eventually spotted her flying past the window. She was actually dressed all in green, so her name really should have been Jade.

Anyhoo, the last time Amelie attended a party at Lorraine's house, she was forcibly bound, gagged, and had her head shoved against a wall, but this time it was a much more genteel occasion. Her only physical injury was when she tripped over the hem of her red velvet gown and scraped her arm on the edge of her jewels.

The trouble with family photos is that by the time you've had eight attempts at getting the composition right...

... everyone throws in the towel.

But still, at least the sun was out for photo number nine. We'd been there so long, it had changed seasons.

Anyhoo, Big Sis is now forty years old and one week, and is currently rocketing towards fifty like a runaway train with no brakes, so having enjoyed a delicate hors d'oeuvre of a party last Saturday, it was time for the all-you-can-eat blow-out yesterday. And if you think Devizes is the town that never sleeps, you should try St Leonards. It's a miracle Ibiza ever gets a look in.

We all met at my parents' house yesterday lunchtime. Well, I say 'all'. At the allotted meeting time, my brother and his family were stuck behind a tow-truck on the road to Eastbourne. They hadn't broken down (although family relationships were close), but they had missed their turning off the M25 and ended up in a traffic jam they should never have encountered. Fortunately, however, the queue wasn't permanent, and they were soon on the move again. Slowly, behind a vehicle on tow.

So while the rest of us were ordering food, they were ordering coffee at Sainsburys in Tunbridge Wells, just so they could use the toilets. They eventually arrived three hours late, shortly before they were due to leave.

Fortunately, all was not lost (although they had been for a couple of hours), and they were here in plenty of time to see Big Sis trying to set her hair on fire...

As you can see, we had everything a good party needs: takeaway food, condiments, strawberries, cake and a big tube of UHU. It's the glue that holds this family together.

Having eaten enough food to end world hunger, and danced the afternoon away to the sound of S Club 7 (that was mainly Amelie, to be fair), we all hit the town for a trip to TK Maxx. Lisa bought herself a party dress (which seemed a bit late in the day to me), Amelie got some goggles, and I bought a big tub of catnip. My brother asked if he could have some for their three-legged moggy, so I decanted a few spoonfuls into a small plastic bag, and tied it up for him before they left.

I then waved them off at the door, and wished them a much better journey home, with the small bundle of dried herbs in their glove box. Let's hope they weren't stopped by the police.

It's Big Sis with Bad Eye!

Good Walker had wandered off. But clearly one kitten was enough to give Sis the over-excited look of a lottery winner. Although she wouldn't be so pleased if she knew it was weeing on her work trousers.

As it happens, I think a visit from Big Sis has brought out the best in those kittens. Within minutes of her leaving last night, they were emerging from the sofa of their own accord, and venturing out to play...

Or maybe they were just checking she was gone.

Word has just reached us from the M23 that Big Sis is on her way here, and should be arriving in the next half hour. Which is a surprise, as we weren't even sure she was in the country. Apparently yesterday's photos have proved even more irresistible than I realised, and she's currently driving across the south of England just to cuddle kittens.

So time is of the essence, and I probably should be clearing a space on the sofa, but just to update everyone on some other travel news...

Lisa heard from the bus company this week. It was back on April 29th that she e-mailed the Brighton & Hove Bus Company about her little trip the day before, and they promised to reply within three working days. So when she still hadn't heard anything two weeks later, she wrote a letter (the old-fashioned papery kind) to the managing director. I posted it for her on Monday. So with ironic timing, they e-mailed her later that day.

The e-mail spoke of their great concern, and the "inconvenience" caused to Lisa, before stating that "We take pride in the fact that our drivers maintain the highest standards and therefore anything that affects the safety and comfort of our passengers is of particular concern to the company. I have arranged for the driver to be seen by his manager."

And that was basically it. Not so much as a free bus ticket. Fortunately, however, it pays to go to the top. Wednesday's post brought a letter personally signed by the managing director, which apologised for the original delay in replying, stating that Lisa's e-mail "unfortunately got misfiled from our inbox". Presumably into the trash can. He then apologises again, before adding "rest assured that this is the subject of a full investigation including reviewing the CCTV images that we have, so that we can pursue it with the driver concerned."

So that's obviously fantastic news. Not the bit about the full investigation, but the fact that they have the incident on film. Lisa might not receive any compensation, but she could still get £250 from You've Been Framed.

It was amateur sex night in the Gardner household yesterday. I admit I'm no expert, but I've watched a lot of videos online, looked at a few photos (some of them explicit), and having read a lot of gynaecological information in recent weeks, I felt it was about time I had a go.

So I'm going to stick my neck out, and say that we've got two girl kittens and a boy. I think this one's a girl...

We've given each kitten a Native American style name, based on its key characteristic. So that one's Bad Eye. Her left eye repeatedly got stuck shut around the age of three weeks, but with regular treatment from an experienced eye care professional (that's me), she appears to be fine now. So we might have to change her name to Good Eye.

This little lady is Big Kitten...

While the other two spend their time sleeping and playing, Big Kitten's constantly stuffing her face with milk. As a result, she's always been the largest. She's also slightly lighter in colour than the others, so I think she takes after her Mum. Interestingly, despite being the biggest in size, she's also the least likely to explore the outside world. If you plonk her down in the middle of the living room, she makes a bee-line for the back of the sofa. At first I thought she was shy and insecure, but in reality I think she's just looking for another feed.

So those are the pussycat dolls, and this is the boy of the band...

That's Good Walker. So called because when the other two were still wobbling around like newborn deer, he was striding confidently across the living room floor like a lion. In the past couple of days, however, Big Kitten has improved in leaps and bounds, and is giving him a run for his money. So if he suddenly puts on a growth spurt, we might have to swap their names. It's ironic, because if there's one kitten you'd expect to be running constantly, it's Bad Eye.

I was reading my employers' latest 'Equality Bulletin' yesterday, in an effort to become less racist, sexist and homophobic, and to my delight, it featured a fantastic article under the heading 'Case Law Update'. Admittedly, it doesn't sound like the kind of headline that makes you want to read on, but it was well worth the effort. It turned out to be a brief report on an employment tribunal entitled 'Stone v Ramsay Health Care UK Operations Ltd', in which the claimant was awarded £18,000 in compensation after suffering discrimination at work.

Being a public legal document, the full judgement is available online, and if you're ever at a loose end on a wet Wednesday afternoon, I can thoroughly recommend browsing through that PDF. It's like reading a script from 'The Office'. Only funnier and more cringe-worthy. Not even Rumpole of the Bailey made law so entertaining.

The case involves a lady called Michelle Stone (the claimant), who was a General Manager at the Winfield Hospital in Tewkesbury, when she fell pregnant and subsequently went off on maternity leave. She was replaced by an interim manager called Tania Terblanche. Which is where the problems started. Now, I'm sure Tania's a lovely lady and is kind to animals, children and the sick, but when it comes to the sisterhood, her opinions leave something to be desired. According to the tribunal, once she was in position, "Ms Terblanche expressed her view that it was ridiculous for a woman to take 12 months' maternity leave". And I, for one, agree with her. They should get five years at least. But unfortunately for Tania, Michelle opted to take her full entitlement.

You'd think that Tania would be pleased to get the manager's job for a year, but apparently not. Michelle worked right up until Friday 5th February 2010, and on Monday the 8th she gave birth via caesarean section. Two days later, on Wednesday the 10th, she received an e-mail from Tania which read:

"Hi Michelle. I think you should give me your views on the email below. Do you have any suggestions? Your feedback would be much appreciated. Regards Tania."

I'm sure Michelle would have loved to do a bit of work for her interim replacement, but sadly she was in hospital at the time, drugged up to the eyeballs with painkillers, with a newborn baby by her side. So the e-mail went unanswered. Fortunately Tania's a patient woman, so she gave Michelle another two days, before instructing her PA to phone the woman on Friday the 10th, and tell her to respond to the e-mail.

Personally I would have responded. Ideally with a few swear words. But instead, Michelle calmly explained to the PA that the reason she's on maternity leave is because SHE'S JUST HAD A BLOODY BABY, and that having only just arrived home from hospital with some prescription drugs and a four-day old child, it's probably not the best time to be hassling her for some unpaid work.

You'd think that might have been the end of it. But oh no. The tribunal report states that "Thereafter, through March, Ms Terblanche continued emailing the claimant on a number of occasions asking her questions and seeking information and advice". After all, it was "ridiculous" for her to be taking maternity leave just because she's had a baby, so why shouldn't she keep responding to work e-mails? She's getting maternity pay; surely it's the least she could do?

Michelle disagreed, and stopped responding. So what did Tania do? She wrote a formal letter of complaint to their manager, raising a grievance against Michelle, and stating that "she had felt unsupported by the claimant when the claimant was away on maternity leave".

I love that. But not as much as I love this direct quote from the employment tribunal's published report:

"Ms Terblanche thought the claimant was unprofessional and that it was all down to her hormones."

Marvellous. Michelle Stone was awarded £18,000 in compensation for the injury to her feelings, but frankly I think it was worth a lot more. You'd have to pay a fortune for a comedy script that good. I might turn it into a movie.

It's less than forty-eight hours since Shimmy dropped her kittens down the back of the armchair, and The Argus have already got hold of the story...

Apparently it's all to do with a double-dip recession. So there's every chance she'll drop them down there again.

Q. What do you get if you cross this...

... with this..?

The answer is a mini crisis on a Sunday night. They say that when the cat's away, the mice play, but in our case, it's the cats who play up when Amelie's out of town.

As the first photo above demonstrates, Amelie's spent the weekend dressing up as her Grandad in my parents' kitchen. We needed her out of the way so that we could raise a toast to the happy couple without being asked for more peanut butter. It also gave me the chance to write my article for the American ophthalmology journal. Which was a chance I miraculously took yesterday afternoon, after procrastinating since Friday.

You would think that Amelie's absence would make the kittens' lives easier, but as it turned out, she managed to put the cat back into panic attack without even being here. Mainly because she left her bedroom unattended. I was in the bath at 9 o'clock last night when I suddenly heard Shimmy miaowing at the top of her voice. I naturally assumed that Lisa was terrorising the kittens by cuddling them against their mother's will, so I shouted at her to leave them alone, but she called back to say she hadn't touched them.

When the miaowing continued, my first thought was that Shimmy was going into labour again, so I began to wonder if I should save my bath water to drown a new litter. At which point Lisa broke the silence by shouting "The kittens have gone!" in a slightly panicked voice.

Two minutes later, I was out of the bath and searching the flat in a towel. There were no kittens behind the TV, or anywhere in sight, but Shimmy was clearly trying to tell us something. Namely that she was in a parenting pickle. It transpired that whilst I was in the bath, Lisa was in the kitchen and Amelie was in St Leonards, Shimmy had decided to move the kittens into Am's bedroom. Which is like entering the lion's den for a small cat, and something she'd never have done if the beast was in residence.

Unfortunately, in her efforts to move house, Shimmy had managed to drop all three kittens behind Am's big armchair, before realising that she couldn't get down there herself. Which is when she'd turned to us for assistance. So while Shimmy shouted her encouragement, I proceeded to move Amelie's bed, a CD rack, my big guitar case, two toy boxes and an armchair, before squeezing into the corner of the bedroom and retrieving three small kittens. We then shut her out of there before she did it again.

Ironically, despite having come close to losing her offspring in a freak armchair-related accident, Shimmy refused to move the kittens back to the safety of the princess tent. And she wouldn't leave them in the cat bed under the table either. So they're now behind the sofa in the living room. It's their third home in as many weeks. They're like a trio of big fat gypsies.

If, like me, you've ever wondered what it would look like if Miranda Hart and Taylor Swift met Buster Bloodvessel at a wedding, here's your answer...

It's not easy getting the composition right when you're holding the camera in one outstretched hand. I was actually trying to photograph the buffet. Let's face it, it was my main reason for being there.

But despite looking like Jonathan Antoine with alopecia, I had a nice time at the wedding yesterday. Although at £6.50 for a glass of wine, I was glad that Lisa's tee-total. I bought her a Coke for £1.80 and we left it at that. The nuptials were held at Newick Park, which might sound like a band (with swings) who should be playing at the Dome, but is actually a country house hotel in the middle of nowhere. It's a Grade II listed Georgian building set in 255 acres of private parkland. Which makes it a challenge trying to find your car when you leave at 11pm and realise there are no lights outside.

The blonde bombshell in the photo above isn't the bride, it's our good friend H (named after the gay one in Steps). We've already been to her wedding. Admittedly I probably should have been photographing the happy couple, but there were plenty of other people doing that, and I felt that what this occasion really needed was more photos of us. Sadly, H's husband couldn't be in that particular portrait as he was unconscious at the time. £6.50 wasn't enough to put him off.

But marriages aside, the other happy event to take place yesterday was Chloe's first visit to the vet in more than three months. When she was last there in January, they waved her off with a £400 bill, and the advice that if she didn't pick up within three days, I should take her back to be put down. But like a feline Rasputin, she refuses to die, and in the last three months has staged the kind of recovery rarely seen since Lazarus. Lisa thinks it's the arrival of Shimmy which is keeping her young, and I tend to agree. Amelie's been bothering Shimmy so much, she's no longer sending Chloe to an early grave.

Chloe's been living on the tablets of the dead since February, but they're on the verge of running out, so I was forced back to the vet yesterday to beg for some more. It turned out to be a far more pleasant experience than last time. I saw yet another different vet, who was actually a lot nicer, and by the time I left, she'd convinced me that I'm the owner of a miracle cat.

It transpires that since the end of January, Chloe has gained 15% in body weight, which is not only wonderful, but unheard of. The vet said that in cases like hers, the best they usually hope for is for the cat to maintain its weight at the same level. Most actually go downhill. Chloe's the first cat she's come across to have fattened back up to a healthy size. She also said that a lot of cats become anaemic, but that Chloe has the bright pink gums of a red-blooded lion.

So I'm clearly doing something right. I just wish I knew what.