I’ve been in the studio this evening, doing a few shots for other purposes and decided, after stepping on this dead mouse a dozen times or more that I’d have a go at shooting it myself. DM, for those who don’t look at his pages, shot it a few days ago, following its untimely demise when he was sanding woodwork in preparation for painting.

I couldn’t therefore do a straightforward copy of his shot (not because I couldn’t do the shot, simply because I try not to step into the same ground as others where I can, so I decided on a “death throes” one and I’d like to think I’ve achieved some “thrashing around” in my shot.

There are a number of reasons for this – firstly, we’re having “rodent problems” again – or at least we think so – we’ve got something burrowing under our lawn and in the veggie patch. Whatever it is isn’t big enough to be a wabbit and having just spent all that dosh on wabbit proof fencing, I’d be bloody furious if it was a wabbit. Nope, it’s a little critter that’s been named around these parts as the catamole – though if we’re honest, we both think deep down it’s more rats. I think the entire population of rats on the planet are here in our garden sometimes. We’re going to have to get the Slaymore out again.

Then of course, we’ve been painting and decorating again today. Not major mucky stuff – an artist’s brush touching up the bits of paintwork that have been damaged by the joinery work or our curtain rail. So a bit of DIY kit is appropriate for my day.

We reckon these “mouses” are designed to spontaneously combust after ten hours use – this is the second one we’ve killed in a very short time and Black and Decker (bless their little hearts, she says with her tongue firmly planted in her cheek) won’t sell a new motor to anyone in the hoi polloi for fear of having the pants sued off them if the poor hapless member of the public manages to electrocute themselves. You can buy a new plastic cover if you want, for three times the price of a new mouse, but you can’t replace the motor.

Ah well, that’s it then, I suppose this one had better go off to landfill heaven then and we’d better go off to Focus for a new one……….

last year I was sore....