When news reached me, via the local evening paper, the "Evening News", the evening paper that is widely distributed throughout the city by noon each day, making something of a mockery of the title, that Worcester is putting itself forward to enter a nationwide contest to find the cleanest city in Britain, I was mildly surprised.

This is the city in which the taxi drivers toss their extensive collection of cigarette ends into the street. The taxi rank bears witness to this.

This is the city in which I have personally witnessed the casual, habitual and constant discarding of litter onto the pavement or even the road. The most obvious recent example of this is the rider of a small motor bike, having finished her MacDonald's coke or whatever, simply threw the cardboard carton into the road, and rode on without a second glance.

This is the city that has a fine pedestrian bridge, built in 1991, which spans the River Severn, which seems to me to be the most convenient refuse disposal point for many, and certainly the easiest to spot from a distance. It looks pretty, and it's always got a stream of detritus floating downstream away from it.

This is the city that has placed many Dog Waste bins in prominent places throughout public places. They remain un-emptied for so long, however, that these bins are full to overflowing, as well as having a plentiful supply of neatly wrapped parcels of dog's faeces placed beneath the bins, looking just as though they were wrapped by a Belgian Chocolatier.

This is the city that doesn't employ refuse disposal executives, but employs people to redistribute the rubbish that has been collected in bins. To watch them is an entertainment in itself; the way they gather together badly tied bin bags, and allow them to spill over the pavements, then walk away from the scattered detritus.

Given the above, I thought perhaps that it was worthwhile the city entering other contests of a similar nature. Below I offer my nominations along with evidence to help the judges make a decision.

How about the most friendly city towards boating visitors? My evidence for this is being woken at 3:00 a.m. by a group of kindly souls, rocking the narrow boat I was on at the time, and shouting "Wakey Wakey, Motherfuckers!" Kind of them but I had no desire at the time to check whether or not they had thrown my bicycle into the river, but I might just as well have done it, as I was awake at the time anyway.

How about Best Planned City in Britain? This after all is the city that built a by-pass in 1986 or so, including the first major road crossing of the River Severn for who knows how many years, and built it single carriageway. This is now the busiest road in the county, and the bridge is not wide enough to be made dual carriageway.

Another example for this award is the recent decision pending to cut down the trees in the High Street, and replace them with new ones that do not grow so quickly or as tall. Ah, they've finally worked out how to read a seed catalogue. I think we also know how long newly planted saplings will last in the average High Street, don't we?

Perhaps they should enter the newest City dialect in Britain. I overheard a lady informing the person sitting next to her, that he may as well eat the snack she had recently purchased for her female child, as she had recently expressed the opinion that she would not eat the snack, she did not want the snack, and that she did not intend to take the snack home with her. It was expressed thus:

"'Ave ar babbies, 'er won' 'av' em, 'er wun eat 'em, 'er don' wannum, 'er said".

What shocked me was that I understood every "word". Oh, by the way, if you try it yourself, and it sounds really attractive, you're doing it wrong.

Now, don't get me wrong, I don't to leave you with the view that I do not like the City of Worcester. There are some very fine points that I've yet to mention. Among them is the fine paved areas: the areas of crazy paving spread throughout the city, all ready to trip you up; the pavement pizza; the chewing gum that slows down an average shopping trip on a warm day by up to 37.6%; I could go on.

The County however is gorgeous. Go there. Avoid the city.

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