SO there it lay, a perfectly formed patch of grass where people had once liked to laze on a summer lunch hour.

It was just a humble green sward, minding its own business between the pumping station and Sabrina Bridge. But then the earth movers made their... er, move.

And one sunny, early autumn morning, safely behind steel barriers erected to keep out a curious public, they did their dastardly deeds, scraping off the surface turf to reveal the brown alluvial tilth of the Severn Valley.

The weeks passed by. Before long, those entrepreneurs of the plant world - weeds - colonised the naked soil. We should not forget that Mother Nature hates nakedness. She's such a prude, you know. Summer blended into autumn, and there was soon a veritable harvest home of mugwort, fat hen, groundsel and chickweed blowing in the Worcestershire wind. And then, one morning, the harvesters arrived in the form of council workmen, scything this bumper bounty like the yeomen of old.

Council trailers were stacked high with the fruit of the Severn's banks. Before long, the surface had once again become bare soil, smoothed, rolled - and, for all I know - given a few splashes of aftershave. A little while later, more council workmen started sowing grass seeds, scattering them like characters from a biblical parable. Some seeds were covered, hopefully to germinate, a few landed among the tares... and the local bird population received word that a new specialist restaurant had just opened near Croft Road.

I am intrigued. Presumably, Worcester City Council now has so much taxpayers' money to burn that it must devise useless, idiotic exercises such as this. What's next - painting coal?