About this time every year, I’ll stand in front of the mirror and stick my tongue out for a good look.

Then I will take my blood pressure.

Next, go and have a look at the garden.

Is it worth it all the effort or shall I call it a day?

After all, when I think about it, I am another year older.

But then I look at the greenhouse and there they are.

The pigeons. Sitting in a row on the roof, in pairs, snuggling up to each other, cooing and wagging their tails.

It’s spring and the pigeons are at it. Well, if it’s good enough for the pigeons, it’s good enough for me

To be fair, I do enjoy gardening, and I do have a decent success rate, but on the downside, now that I’ve turned 80, I’m starting to think that I might be over the hill.

But I’ve had an idea. Here’s what I’ll do.

I’m off out this afternoon to get my second plague jab.

If I survive, I’ll dig the garden for another year and if I don’t, I won’t.

Well. That’s that, we live to fight again. I didn’t feel a thing, and it turned out that the young lady who performed my life-preserving jabbing is from Spain.

I must admit, I do enjoy my gardening.

It isn’t difficult and no matter how hard you try, it’s impossible to make a complete mess of it.

Young or old, veteran or novice, just give it a try.

I’ve been gardening for more than 60 years and although the basic rules stay the same, every year you will learn something new.

An old saying that I often use is that ’all things change’, but I suppose that gardening has undergone fewer changes than anything else.

Take, as an example, good old muck.

It’s only in recent times that I stopped using well-rotted farmyard manure and rotating my crops.

Never grow spuds on the same plot two years on the run.

Then I discovered that it was easier to buy a couple of bags of miracle grow from the garden centre than it was to go through all the effort to stick (literally) to tradition.

The biggest changes were brought in by the farmers in the island who now grow crops for export, or to feed livestock that was worth more if it was exported to be slaughtered and processed across.

Here we go, off again. The daily rant.

So, the other morning I was looking through my notes.

I always keep a notepad handy. Yes, that’s what I said, me keeping a note pad.

Well you never know, I do have the occasional flash of light, so just in case I have another one, I keep a notepad close to hand.

Unfortunately I couldn’t find it, so I was no better off (just joking).

I was following the theme of ’all things changing’.

Do you remember when we changed our currency from pounds, shillings and pence to decimal?

I think that it was in 1972 or 73. Another ’one great step for mankind’.

I remember it well. It wasn’t exactly chaos, but it wasn’t far away.

The local Chambers of Commerce arranged special lessons for shopkeepers and their staff. Schools followed the rest with currency conversion kits and so on.

A company who sold and repaired electric cash tills had kindly offered to convert any old till, in any business, free of charge.

I must admit that this tale does sound a little tall, but anyone who knew the man in question would never doubt its truth. Not in any way.

The two smartly dressed gentlemen, who had come from afar, had just entered the Royal, a public house in Peel.

They repeated their offer to the landlord, a man well-know to all as ’Moffie’, as he handed his wooden drawer to the two strangers and said ’Okay, convert that.’