*ROUNDING a bend in the wilds of Herefordshire we came across a newly-slain pheasant lying in the road. I knew it was fresh because the bird hadn’t been there when we had earlier passed that way.

I now have an admission to make. Just briefly, for a second… I toyed with the idea of taking it home for the pot.

This didn’t happen for the main reason that there was traffic behind us and so the moment came and went.

All the same, I’m not against such practice in principle.

Thanks to people like Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, foraging has shaken off many of its taboos.

Hunter-gatherers of the world unite.

*LEAVING home for me was a gradual process. After a few stops and starts, mission had been accomplished by the time I was 20.

I realise this sounds impossibly romantic, yet it’s true – I arrived at my new destination carrying only a suitcase and guitar.

Forty years on, and it seems that no young person flies the coop without at least one furniture van in tow, in other words the car belonging to the Bank of Mum and Dad.

But one question if you don’t mind. What happens when they up sticks again? That’s right… that very same removal firm.

*SITTING on a bench near the Diglis Hotel, I see a youth approaching with a girl aged about nine. As he draws closer, I see that he is smoking an enormous cannabis joint, or ‘spliff’ as it was so quaintly known back in the 1960s.

It’s heartening to know that such ancient crafts and traditions are being passed down the generations. Not… *NOT all young people live off a diet of junk food. I was heartened to see a couple of young women sat at the café table opposite tucking into a decidedly Mediterranean mixture of salad and olives.

It was a case of travel broadening the mind rather than the waistline.

We hope.