Most mornings I wake up and ask myself: What am I going to do today. Some days I do what I want. Some days I do what is necessary. Some days I do something important. Some days I get nothing useful done. Before going to sleep in the evening I ask myself what I did all day...and make value judgements. Not a lot; nothing harmful; some good work. I like the idea of A Good Day's Work for A Good Day's Pay. What do you do all day?

Those remarks were extracted from my introductory weblog nearly one hundred blogs ago in December 2005. After four days delving into the murky morass of parallel currencies and energy coupons I am now returning to station to fill you in on my week. On Tuesday and Thursday aftrernoon I travelled to Winchelsea Church with Elspeth Wrenn...a fellow Ryesingers Tenor...to lend vocal support to the Winchelsea Singers and their performance of Fauré’s Requiem tomorrow evening. Yesterday in the car Elspeth told me the gruesome tale of the pigeon killed outside her window by a sparrow hawk…Nature raw in tooth and claw. Today the newspapers are full of bird flu. My sentiments tend towards those of Littljohn...formerly of The Sun but now of The Daily Mail...herewith his comments.

We’ve been building up to the news of the first case of bird flu in Britain for months. There’s nothing like a good health scare and it’s been a while since a decent epidemic. Mad cows, foot-and-mouth, salmonella in eggs. We love it. Helicopters are scrambled, front pages cleared, exclusion zones cordoned off, temporary mortuaries prepared, emergency action plans implemented. I’m surprised the dead swan hasn’t been given a nickname. How about Cyril?

If the Government handles this as well as foot-and-mouth there won’t be a bird left in Britain by the weekend. There’ll be bonfires of budgies, pyres of parrots, conflagrations of cockatoos everywhere. Exports of British chickens will be banned by the EU and cost the British taxpayer billions. I don’t want to put a dampener on all this excitement but it is birds who get Bird Flu but no matter. The Chief Veterinary Officer has imposed a Wild Bird Risk Area east of Perth between Aberdeen and Edinburgh. That should keep them out. Within DEFRA’s 1500 square mile exclusion area are 175 poultry farms, three million birds and a quarter of a million free-range chickens.

In the post today was the April issue of Purton Today with its banner headline Making Local Government Local and Serving the Lydiards, Hook, Minety and other local beauty spots. It’s as good as any local paper in this land or any other. I really must persuade the editor to accept my offer of blog space here for this monthly journalistic tour-de-force. The editor has bird problems. Here is John Papworth from his Perambulator Column.

Unfortunately the Anti-Fox Hunting Bill recently quite uselessly passed in what is left of our Parliament and its powers after the unelected commission of fixers, schemers, bribers, plotters and deceivers of Brussels have done their secret nefariousness, omitted to include any prohibition of foxes hunting chickens. I only had six fine ladies, and all of them recycling all my kitchen left-overs, and laying eggs as though on a permanent parade for that sole purpose. Then one day a friend rang to say would I like to give home to a cockerel. I thought that was a splendid idea and had visions of lots of little chicks running all over the place.

Well, the cockerel duly arrived, a fine, proud, imperious-looking fellow with a huge gold crest, a majestic beak like a Roman Emperor’s nose and a steely glare in his eye like a churchwarden on the warpath; and he had lots of feathers on his legs as though wearing trousers. Since he had six wives I decided to call him Henry, but the fact is, despite the majesterial arrogance of his deportment he proved to be made of less sterner stuff. His wives bullied him mercilessly, constantly stole his food, chased him away and generally made his life a misery.

But other forces were at work to also make it shorter, to say nothing of the fate of two of his wives; the neighbouring field seems one of those places the local hunt has neglected, legally or otherwise, for Mr Reynard flourishes there and one day I found a wide scatter of feathers as all that remained of them, and then I found Henry himself half devoured and no longer the cock of the walk.

Not one to cry over spilt milk John Papworth found a new source of hens and another male bird…Henry IX. Local reports tell me the hens have settled in well but the new Henry is just as timid and afraid of his wives as his unfortunate predecessor. But it is early days. Perhaps Purton will be seeing lots more little chicks running around before long.

Meanwhile a few hundred miles north of Wiltshire DEFRA officials are scurrying around testing any swan they can lay their hands on. DEFRA is the country’s front-line defence against this avian conspiracy to take over the world. If the media-induced mass hysteria is justifiable then this is just a little worrying. Cyril’s carcass was spotted on 29th March. It was rotting and had clearly been dead for some time. It took sixteen hours for DEFRA to react as the alert was phoned in outside office hours. And then the media needed seven days to coordinate their proclamation of a National Panic. But let me end this weblog on a helpful note. If you are in the habit of flaunting the Royal Prerogative and eating swan for Sunday Lunch make sure you cook it properly. Virus H5NI is killed by cooking.