The Euro-scene is moving so swiftly that commentators or journalists on a daily newspaper must be hard pressed to keep up to speed, far less a weekly column such as this. Suffice it to say that I feel like old Private Frazer on Dad’s Army: “You’re doomed; ye’re all doomed.” The Eurozone was a crazy project and it’s only a matter of time before it collapses, or alternatively results in some kind of fiscally centralised super-State (thankfully with the UK outside it.)

So with great Global events swirling around, there is nothing for it but to get on with day-to-day duties. The highlights of my week included a meeting with Bill Gates during which his computer software broke down! He made the interesting point that the healthier and better educated people are, and the longer their resulting life expectancy, the fewer children they have. That means that as the World’s population passes the worrying 7 billion mark, the more we can spend on everyday aid – food, education and the rest - the more likely it is that we will get the population and resulting problems of immigration and starvation under control.

We need to get the North Wilts population under control if we are to avoid continuing concreting over of our green and pleasant county. But I am not sure that we can improve much on the level of education in the County. Schools Minister Nick Gibb very kindly accepted my invitation to spend a day in the constituency last Thursday. We visited the outstandingly good Springfields Academy in Calne (the first ever Special School to be granted Academy Status); then St Mary’s, Calne which is the very best that the private sector can provide; then it was off to Lyneham Primary where they are struggling to counter the effects of the closure of the airbase, and looking forward to the influx of new children in a year or two’s time; and then finally we went to the outstandingly good Royal Wootton Bassett Academy, which was the first ever comprehensive to achieve an ‘outstanding’ grade in every single one of Ofsted’s 27 criteria. I think the Minister was duly impressed by all he saw.

Friday included a meeting at Kington Langley’s Greathouse, where the assembled residents gave me a hard time about maintaining their much-needed mobility under the Government’s current reforms. I think I was able to reassure them, at least to some degree. Then there were meetings with the new Inspector of Police in Chippenham, surgeries in Cricklade and Malmesbury, firework parties in Easton Grey and Brinkworth, a lunch in Purton, evidence to the Parliamentary Boundary Commissioners in Bristol, a welcome to Wiltshire school choirs in the Albert Hall and a meeting with both Waitrose and Sainsbury’s to discuss their (probably unwelcome) proposals for an out-of-town supermarket in Malmesbury.

Of such things are one’s life composed. And from the comfort and stability which they provide, one can take a sideways look at the great national and International stage. I remember one of my predecessors, David Eccles, who was MP from 1943 to 1962, giving me a good piece of advice: ‘Always keep some Wiltshire mud on your boots.’ I try my best to do so.