ASBO bunny; floating worktops; Blomkvist

Hired a car for the day on Saturday to do a carefully-planned list of jobs and retail park shopping. First on the list was to take the bunnies to the vets for some jabs. Lola proved easier to get into her cage, largely we think by dint of being dimmer and not seeing the impending captivity coming. Harley took some extraction from under the bed with a feather duster and then some cunning trickery to get him into his cage. He then worked himself into a tizz when the vet tried to examine him, scratched Ruth (again) and had to be taken off to a side room where the vet could try again with the help of his nurse – he was successfully given his myxi jab but the vet gave up the attempt to examine his teeth due to H’s excessive thrashing about (rabbits can, in theory at least, struggle so violently that they break their own backs). Lola luckily proved much better behaved. We carried Harley from the room in shame with the vet having put a note on his record to warn future examiners. He continued wound up while I was sitting with him while Ruth paid the bill, thumping violently on the floor of his cage and startling a large boxer dog on the other side of the waiting room. Eventually I took him out to the car, worried that the dog was starting to look agitated.

Next on the list was a round of retail parks in order to visit Pets at Home (Ruth disapproves of PaH because they sell actual pets as well as pet equipment, but they also sell a variety of litter that stops the entire house stinking of rabbit wee), Maplin electronics and B&Q, followed by a visit to the former Grovelands Garden Centre at Shinfield, now a ‘Dobbies’. Ruth bought several plants and a pot for her new olive tree, and I bought a stainless steel orb, thinking it might look artistic under the bamboo.

Went to the marina on Sunday to admire Ray's new oak worktops. The boat is really taking on quite a luxurious look. We had a pleasant lunch sitting in the prow and watched a grebe couple nest-building.

Made one of my reasonably infrequent visits to the cinema last night to see The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, or, to use the original Swedish, Män som hatar kvinnor, which sounds altogether more threatening (as it well might, given that the Swedish name translates as ‘Men who hate women’). Excellently well done and atmospheric adaptation of Stieg Larsson’s novel – a few inevitable bits of licence taken with the book but not so much as to be annoying. The film does play down Blomkvist’s playboy side and the actor playing him, while not unattractive, was less dishy than I had imagined him while reading – but there you go; it’s not Mills & Boon, after all. The film manages to make the scenes of Swedish scenery, objectively attractive, appear bleak and foreboding.