I’ve been shovelling shit today as part of my chores. It’s something I seem to do quite a lot of (that’s what happens when you are ‘Mum’ to two dogs, a wabbit and three hens). I must say that I do think it a tad ungrateful that our hens, who’ve set up residence in our back lobby to escape rain and mud show so little gratitude that when I stepped out of the back door into the lobby, a lovely pile of fresh chicken shit squeezed between my toes as my weight went down. I think tomorrow they’ll find that suddenly they can’t get into the lobby any more……

Milly has been renamed 'doddery Doris' as she's so old now she shuffles around, can't get onto her perch at night and looks generally dishevelled!

Anyway, back to killer wabbits.

My only remaining bunny is about ten years old or so – he’s the surviving husband of Sabine, whose body I was burying in the garden on New Year’s Eve in 2003. He’s been on his own now for nearly two years since his brother died. He’s usually known these days as grumpy bunny because he was badly treated before I had him and has never been very easy to handle. I must say, I'm starting to sympathise with him as I've been as grumpy as a grumpy thing all week.

Today, I was battling him to clean out his hutch – for some reason he’d decided he was going to stay put and growl at me when I tried to move him from one end to the other to clean underneath where he sat. Then the heavens opened and in the space of the five minutes or so that it took me to finish the task, I was wet through to my underwear. I had rats tails for hair, tramlines down my face from running mascara and to top the lot was covered in rabbit shit and straw. Oh joy of joys. Throughout all of this, my bunny spat, growled, snorted and hissed at me – he sure is a monster!

You know what? Despite all this, I still had a better day than any recent day. I actually felt as though I achieved something. I cleared the greenhouse ready for a dousing with Jeyes before next season’s planting begins and I pottered around the garden and did other bits and bobs too. I felt ‘useful’ for the first time in a week and a half. I’m sorry to harp on about Bah Humbug Christmas again but I really can’t abide all the sitting round you have to do. DM has taken away all of my ‘toys’ (you know, sledgehammer, screwdrivers, drills, paintbrushes etc) and forbidden me to work. My Mum tells me he has their full support for that.

Me? I’m screaming up the walls with boredom. I’m sick of the sight of Photoshop and www.anythingtedioustolookat.com (dunno if that’s a real site – I hope not and I can’t be bothered to check). Two more days of this and I’ll be allowed to pick up and do something useful again. I need to be more than a couch potato. Yeah yeah, I know – I’m very fortunate to be able to sit and mither on about being bored. I should be so lucky.

Has anyone ever noticed how when you're feeling bored then EVERYTHING seems boring? That's what's happening to me. David says 'why don't you learn how to use this new software while you've got time?' So I spit and snarl at him that I 'don't want to' - 'can't be bothered'....etc etc. I really have not been very nice at all.

For a ‘technical note’ for any pedants out there. This is not really a bunny at all, it’s a moon gazing hare – one of two I own, both have been photographed in these diary pages before and I suspect this won’t be the last occasion either.

last year, I was bored too - then we were waiting excitedly to become owners of our very own rats nest!