I am infested!!! Or rather my office is overrun with Bird Mites ( Ornithyssos Minimus Mingingus to my new naturalist friends). I

noticed them on Friday, hundreds of them swarming across my mobile phone. I immediately called my rottweiler secretary who is the firm's leading authority on nits given that she has a very sociable 5 year old son. She declared my head louse-free and couldn't see any of the critters that I was starting to make a song and dance about.

Yesterday I decided to take action, assuming them to be dust mites thriving in the atmosphere created beneath my computer and moved all the files, some of which had lain there for weeks, and polished my desk, later asking the cleaners to give it an extra special go. I was horrified when I arrived this morning to discover the little blighters running relay races across my printer. I almost dropped the phone when I saw hundreds more pouring out of the spine of my desk diary as I made an appointment for a rapidly-dispatched client.

I couldn't find any Proper partners to authorise an immediate quarantine at first but eventually Paul agreed I could call Rentokil. They didn't come as quickly as I would have liked and I had to make another call before Matt, the Mite Man arrived and identified my problem, by which time I was itching all over as were the growing number of tourists from other departments that popped in to inspect my misfortune . I'd suspected the loathsome vermin that had been nesting on my windowsill might have had something to do with it and I was right.

Tomorrow it is WAR!!!