lI WAS brought up in a small village populated, in the main, by farm labourers and factory workers. The former walked just a few yards to their work, while the latter cycled four miles to the nearby town.

My father was a schoolteacher, which undoubtedly gave him an elevated position in the community. Consequently, he ended up running everything from the sports teams to the village hall. Fifty years later, the farm labourers are all gone.

Their children have moved out because of property prices.

Former hovels are chocolate box des. res. with Laura Ashley dcor and a 4x4 parked where the pigs used to live.

Time - and market forces - conspire to ensure nothing stays the same. Politicians are not to blame for everything, you know.

YOUNGSTERS like to have 'sword fights' with branches or the stems of certain plants - but they should be wary of certain species. This week I came across the battered remnants of stalks that had obviously been played with by children.

The purple mottling was a dead give-away. The plant was hemlock, the juice of which was much favoured by the Romans as a means of execution. It's best left completely alone.

UNDESIRABLES from the YMCA in St John's continue to make their obnoxious presence known. My network of spies report that all sorts of petty, anti-social behaviour persists from Henwick Road to the riverbank.

The YMCA is now little more than a hostel for offenders.