Jamie Oliver to Blame for Cuckoo Decline.

That's right the blame for the decline of the Common Cuckoo can finally be laid at the door of that famous celebrity school dinner cook Jamie Oliver.
The Naked Chef's intervention in school dinners is well known for his 2005 series Jamie's School Dinners in which he challenged the junk food culture prevalent in schools at the time.
We all have mixed memories of school dinners, some of the schools I attended in the Seventies were equally as experimental as Jamie. I often remember dinners and lessons being combined with such topics as "Eat Like a Middle Age Peasant Day" for History and our Science project "Examine the Common Elements present in Boiled to within an inch of its life Cabbage".
With the bad came some good, I could wax lyrical about Arctic Roll or Apple Crumble and Custard.
When it was Stumpy's turn to start staying at school for lunch we talked about the options and reviewed the school menus. They looked reasonable. We decided that we would send him for school dinners. A hot meal is important we told ourselves. Vegetables and fruit on a regular basis would help reinforce the way we were trying to eat and educate him about food and cooking at home.
There have been testing times, he has objected when many of his peers are bringing pack lunches filled with brightly coloured packaged foods that create a kaleidoscope of enticing images to a small child but sadly fail to deliver when it comes to nutrition.
This year we thought we had it cracked, Stumpy seems to have settled down and is making choices that are about as sensible as you can expect from a six year old, or so we thought.
Sitting down to our evening meal (Pan fried Pork with Caramelised Onion Sauce and Basmati Rice) we were discussing our day. It was in the middle of the meal that Stumpy dropped his bombshell and the horrendous truth of my title began to dawn.

" I had Cuckoo for my dinner today"