it was a dark and stormy night

I don't know... a tiny kitten arrives - maybe I found it in a coffee shop. (There's a coffee shop scene, complete with me trying to juggle too many things, including a cardboard box of vegetables, and some dishy guy very kindly offering to carry half of it to my seat for me. I wanted a mini-danish, but there are none; this is my breakfast, I'm off to a big wedding.)

From somewhere else, an even tinier hamster - from a child, I think. I'm in a flat with the ex-ex Mr B and he has also just bought a gigantic black Great Dane. No; it's not the ex-ex Mr B! Someone else I know, a poet, but after a rather steamy clinch he has suddenly turned into the ex-ex Mr B.

The doorbell goes, he goes to answer it. The animals get out, and I forget what - another animal, I think - he goes chases something down the middle of the black road. It's raining.

The kitten is out. The Great Dane is out, and he's huge, and he's not wearing a collar, and I try to call him back - but he's so new he doesn't even have a name! I'm going, "come here sweetie, come here puppy, come on... come on!" He's in the road with his paws tucked under him like a sphinx, looking at me. All haunch. A 4x4 full of children comes along but he doesn;t move. The car nudges him with a wheel, stops, nudges him again, but he doesn't move. I look at the driver. The driver rolls the 4x4 right over - first the front wheels, then - I'm petrified on the pavement, holding this increasingly alarmed and squirming kitten - the back wheels - over the dog. But the dog seems miraculously able to bear the weight, he is so powerful.

I turn to go inside, and then I see the dog beginning to move. As he pulls himself towards the pavement on his front paws a trail of blood stretches out behind him - his back legs are immobile - he was only mortal after all. I run inside to get a number for a 999 vet. No ex-ex Mr B, I'm not sure where I am, I don't even have a key so I keep trying to leave the door on the latch...

Get the number. The operator wants to know where I am, & I'm running up and down this anonymous London street trying to find a sign (good, isn't it?). All I can see is an estate with some hoodies hanging out & graffiti everywhere, and it is raining so hard - everything is sheets of grey, my eyebrows are streaming (thanks Chippy) - I can't read even the signs on the housing blocks. I'm going, "I can't see, it's kind of like Mayfair, but down a bit."

Run back to the flat, where I have put the kitten and hamster back in their little boxes (I narrowly missed stepping on the hamster at one point, a very fluffy thing) - the kitten is very snug with its mummy, now - and the poor dog is lying in the shrubbery now, he's so well hidden I almost think he's dead... I realise I need a canine ambulance, I can't lift him even if I knew how, or what was wrong with him, and there is no sign of anyone coming back to help me - but I can't seem to get the number again. I'm dialling, dialling. I'm coaxing the dog. I name him, so I can coax him: "Lionel! come here Lionel? Come on sweetie? Liiii-onel...! Come on!"

Lionel!

By the way, I must say that practically the only thing I did yesterday was watch La Reine Margot, a rather sensationalist French film about the Medicis, starring Isabelle Adjani and featuring a prolonged portrayal of the St Bartholemew's Day massacre of the Huguenots.

But enough of that, I have to get ready: I've got a wedding to go to! A poetry wedding! I must leave in time to get a coffee...