The Advancement of Age

The ear hair and nasal have slowed down on me

Which I find intriguing I thought they would get ever more foresty

Maybe my incessant depliation has beaten the growth

I worked with a guy called Ronnie Mordie when I was eighteen on the Northumberland School Grounds department. He was the Gang Leader / Foreman of a team of which I was the most lowly and we laid school fields

Drainage, levelling, sifting making perfectly flat then grassing either by seed, which I preferred, or by turf which was quick but not as good a finish as seeding

Acres we used to do.  It was epic.  All over Northumberland through the summer of 1977.  And winter etc

The Queen visited Hexham High School and their Landscaping programme was brought forward by a couple of years and the A team, led by Ronnie, were called in from Morpeth to do the job

Prior to her majesty's arrival.   It's when I began to become politicised

There was a LOT of very noisy machinery and Ronnie had. Well,  Ronnie had VERY hairy ear holes

I surmised that decades of sitting on wildly bucking loudly racing massive machinery guiding it rapier like across the landscape, without ear defenders had brought on this impressive forest of hair the likes of which I'd never seen or even imagined possible

I wore head phones all the time when the machines were on.  When I was driving tractors and the other diggers dumpers and so on

The team called me posh poof

But always asked for my help on the Sun cross-word puzzle because 'You're an academic son'.