TIME to place my trusty quill pen alongside the nicotine-stained green eye shield and lay them to rest in my grandad’s old roll-top bureau. Probably worth a fortune on TV’s Bargain Hunt, but I don’t want to spend endless hours standing in some God-forsaken bog of a field flogging my faithful possessions for the sake of a miserly couple of a million quid.

Yes fans – both of you – I  embrace today’s technology as much as my once virile, now sadly depleted, body will allow. No future living in the past, no matter how old you are or how things have changed.

At the tender age of 15, I was plunged into London’s high temple of newsprint, Fleet Street, to study at Bolt Court technical college, specialising in print and Allied Arts. For the following three years, I grappled with the mysteries of photography, graphics, complex print and layout techniques and the inevitable Pitman’s shorthand to eventually emerge the other side as a mildly knowledgeable, very, very, junior member of the 4th Estate.

Today, all that ‘High Tech’ stuff I tolled over night and day totally disappeared into the vacuum pit called progress with the eventual fall of Fleet Street.

As I said, my past is as dead as a Dodo, buried in a digital coffin, deep in a sea of social networking and probably as interesting as watching  a cat vomit a fur ball. Nevertheless, I do not need today’s spell and grammar support technology to write a simple column such as this, so switching off – NOW!

Yung budding riters take note of wot we old hacks are still capababel of.

Bowing out now. No more `Old Hack.´ Hope I gave you a few smiles during Covid darkest days.

Thanks for all your nice comments. Adios!

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