By CHRIS UPTON A teacher recently asked me whether I could give a talk to her children on local history. Since she was also an ex-student of mine, and the children were only nine, I happily agreed. "It's on Olbury," she added cunningly. A curse on my over-hasty tongue.

A GEOLOGIST who studies rocks during the day and rocks with his guitar at night is playing his last gig with popular band Flying Colours.

By Tony Deeley A NEW pounds 190,000 hospital screening centre to serve thousands of Black Country patients with bone problems is to be opened by the Prime Minister next week. Tony Blair will visit the Corbett Hospital Outpatient Centre, in Stourbridge, on Friday.

The Black Country business community has called on the Government to fund transport improvements in the area if a pounds 1 billion regeneration programme is to be sustained.

A MAN arrested in connection with the rape of a 15-year-old girl in a Black Country churchyard has been released pending further inquiries. The man, aged 20 and from Dudley, was taken in for questioning by detectives looking into the sex attack on the schoolgirl.