*I HAD a phone call from an old Worcester rocker who was responding to an idea I’d floated a while ago regarding some form of recognition for Jim Capaldi, Worcestershire’s great rock export of the 1960s.

He hinted that it might be an idea if I got something moving but I pointed out that it was the job of a scribbler to suggest things, not necessarily follow them through.

It was the task of others to do this – and talking of such matters, I also remarked that it might be the perfect project for some of the late Capaldi’s surviving superannuated rock millionaire buddies. As a refugee of the 1960s, I must say that it’s always struck me how none of those characters has ever seemed to practise what they once so earnestly preached.

It just goes to prove the essential shallowness of that faraway era.

*KEMPSEY’S long-awaited flood defences will hopefully mean that the villagers never again suffer the disruption that can occur after heavy rainfall.

This particularly applies to the people of Worcestershire’s largest village who live in the proximity of Hatfield Brook. For years, they must have held their breath whenever the heavens opened.

The next item on the antiinundation agenda should now be a clampdown on the litterbugs and assorted vandals who spend so much time and effort blocking the brook with their beer cans, cigarette packets, bricks and other material.

Some on-the-spot fines issued by the local policeman would now appear to be appropriate.

*AUTUMN announced itself weeks ago with its customary signal that first became apparent long before the season had actually begun. It was on a late summer’s morning that I opened the back door, sniffed the air… and like The Wind in the Willows’ Mole, I just knew that things were on the change.

The myriad smells of autumn now linger like the bouquet of a fine wine, a musk that can be drunk by the senses. Some people regard autumn as a time of decay, but I see it as a period of quiet reflection. So here’s to the months of shorter days and frosty morns.

It’s time to hibernate, everyone.

*BIRDWATCHERS will be heartened by the dramatic increase in buzzards. Unknown in the Midlands of my youth, I often see them from my loft window, invariably being chased by those hypocrites of the avian world, carrion crows. Buzzards can be seen in even greater numbers soaring above the Kempsey hams, hook-faced angels sky high over the water meadows. Long may these birds rule all that they so nobly survey.