holding his own pipette,

he would dream of wild experiments,

but his tripod

remained unmounted

and there was no exchange

of tongs.

Dylan tells me that Stuart has been helping him with his GCSE revision and so, after football (another victory – ‘winning is a habit’), I nobly volunteered my own services. Just my luck, he took out his chemistry books. Chemistry was probably my worst subject at school; I used to live in dread of the double lesson every Wednesday morning, a situation not helped by an incident involving Nigel Thompson and a pinch clamp.

All this must have sunk deep into my subconscious because later I dreamt that I was back at school and Liz was my chemistry teacher. She leant over me at my workbench, wearing nothing but a lab coat, and told me that she needed to inspect my milky-white coagulate, I woke up on the sofa with a cry, flushed and flustered.

Sunday April 15th

The cat set out her somnolent stall today, putting her pegs determinedly in me, and making all practical tasks impossible beyond the reading and sending of tweets. It is National Cat Day, and I posted up a photo of her on Twitter, with the caption ‘My cat, asleep, in the eighth of her nine lives. Previous lives include Roman Centurion and Advisor to Cardinal Richelieu.’

Liz replied with a similar photo of her own cat, asleep, and a short poem:

In 1919,

plans for Woodrow Wilson’s League of Nations were composed:

my cat dozed.

Liz was talking to me on Twitter! I found another photo of my sleeping cat. I sent it back with:

In 1789,

Louis XVI appraised the mob and realised his days were numbered:

my cat slumbered.

Liz responded once more with another picture and:

In 1533,

Thomas More refused the Oath and sadly paid the price:

my cat snoozed (and dreamt of mice).

We were having a banter! We were indulging in some actual bantering! The Oath of Succession was actually 1534 but I let that one go. I kept my next one brief in case Liz was getting bored:

In 1351,

the Black Death swept:

my cat slept.

In return, she revealed a respectable working knowledge of early cartographical history:

In 150,

Ptolemy did some geometry and the world got mapped:

my cat napped.

My reply to that one I thought rather witty, and I was a little disappointed when Liz didn’t single it out for particular praise:

In 64,

Rome burned. Nero fiddled. The citizens showed their ire.

My cat curled up by the fire.

Before Liz finished off the sequence with:

In 1323 BC,

my cat spent the year with both eyes firmly shut

then got buried with King Tut.

I have to go now, she wrote, but thanks for making my morning.