SOME wonderful little snippets about life in old Worcestershire crop up when you're trawling through rural memories.

Take the tale Malcolm Scott has unearthed while researching a parish history book for Bransford, Leigh and Leigh Sinton.

One of the things people mention time and time again is the incredible distance some country children walked to school, he said.

I came across the story of one little boy, who was aged only three, but wanted to go to school with his five year-old brother.

I presume the older lad had just started and the youngster didn't want to be left at home.

Eventually their parents gave in and so the little boy walked to school with his brother.

But the distance was two-and-a-half miles and by the time he got there, the little lad had eaten all the sandwiches his mother had given him for lunch.

However, the headmaster took pity on him and offered the boy some of the sandwiches he had prepared for himself.

The problem was, the headmaster loved mustard and often made his sandwiches with nothing more than a mustard filling.

"You can imagine a poor three year-old boy having to munch his way through mustard sandwiches for lunch!"

Happily the lad survived to tell the tale and it's one Malcolm will no doubt be recalling with relish when the parish history book, produced with the support of the parish council, is finally published towards the end of 2002.

It will be, as they say, a proper job.

In hardbound A4 format and prepared by a publishing company used to this sort of thing, it will have nearly 200 pages, between 200 and 400 photographs and hopefully retail for just under £20.

The intention is to cover all aspects of the area's history from ancient times up to and including the present day.

Hence the search is on for material from anyone who has memories, old photographs or anecdotes of life in Leigh, Leigh Sinton and Bransford.

The parish has a great agricultural tradition for hop picking," Malcolm added, "and every year thousands of pickers from the Black Country and South Wales would descend to help with the hop harvest.

For locals it was at time both to be looked forward to and feared. The local lads appreciated the fact many of the pickers were girls, because back then, you didn't get much chance to travel outside your own village to meet people your own age.

But there was also the feeling the local population was almost overwhelmed by the influx, which in some areas completely outnumbered them.

Some of the barracks the pickers lived in are still there and many villagers have memories of hop picking times.

To aid his search for material for the book, Malcolm has advertised in that worthy Black Country organ The Black Country Bugle.

In some respects the way of life for young lads in the rural areas wasn't bad, he added. I get tales of rabbiting and scrumping being told to me and I can't help but think the open air life was better than living in a city backstreet, which is where I spent my youth.

What I want to do is draw on people's memories and make this as much a social history as a factual history of how the parish has changed over the years.

Assisted by a small team, Malcolm hopes to talk to at least 60 of the area's longest-serving residents to obtain a first-hand account of life going back as far as the 1920s.

We are interested in seeing old photographs of village activities and families at work and play which we could use.

What was it like to grow up here? What was school like? What people did for a living village characters... the importance of the railway... the list of subjects is endless.

There have, after all, been very dramatic changes in the parish, particularly since the Second World War.

The railway has closed, shops and pubs have closed, and farming has changed beyond recognition.

Now is the time to record it all before memories are lost forever.

If you can help, Malcolm Scott lives at Aubretia Cottage, Leigh, and his phone number is 01886 833526.