SO that's that, then. My full-time career on the Bolton Evening News ended at the week-end when I retired after nearly 39 years of honest toil at the coalface of provincial journalism.

I am well aware that the modern trend is to stay in jobs for an amount of time equivalent to the lifespan of a gnat and some people will believe I have been giving stability a bad name for successive decades.

All I can say is that, most of the time, it has been great fun and I have always realised that my lack of talent in other directions would have led to a life of total penury if I had not had the good fortune to fall into a career which suited me.

It is tempting to bask in fond memories which evoke a noble calling, but I am well aware that my wife's doughty Yorkshire grandmother regarded me as "that nosey parkerer."

She disapproved of me knocking on doors to bother folk and was probably looking down approvingly when, on the day of her funeral, a stern-faced vicar flagged down our Austin A 35 at Agecroft Cemetery and pointed accusingly at the "Press" sticker which I had displayed on the windscreen.

He was reluctant to believe that I could possibly be there to pay my respects and he let me through grudgingly, clearly suspecting me of some gross and insensitive intrusion.

Over the years I have encountered this attitude on various occasions and have always sought to impart a simple message - local journalists are doing a job just like everybody else and rarely match the stereotype of a heartless hack intent on causing as much trouble as possible.

One chap who chose to bombard me with his views on the evil and dishonest nature of my trade turned out to be a used car salesman totally lacking in self-awareness and any sense of irony.

I suppose I should be looking back fondly on all my major scoops over the years, but - apart from my efforts on the town hall fire in 1981 - I often contrived to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

During my spell as crime reporter in the late 1960s and early 1970s I developed an unwelcome reputation for usually being on holiday or a day off when murders and serious crimes occured.

So much so that senior detectives such as Harry Swindley and Bert Hoy used to ask me when I was taking my next break.

It seems a long time ago as I start my retirement today - freed from the tyranny of the alarm clock.

I will never have to tell the boss that the reason I was late was because the budgie escaped from its cage and alighted on the clock, turning off the alarm.

This imaginative pupil's wonderful story is going the rounds at a Bolton school and it is such a shame that I no longer have the opportunity to employ the same magical excuse.

Tee hee hee.