You know it’s time to say farewell when you look around at the new additions to the newsroom and realise you’re not so much a Godfather as a grandfather.

So goodbye it is after 43 years behind the lens working for the Advertiser.

During that time I served nine editors, photographed 22 different managers at Swindon Town and witnessed the election of seven Members of Parliament to represent us. Swindon even changed its name but soon reverted back to the original. Can anyone remember Thamesdown?

I paid £1 per night at my first lodgings in Lansdown Road, Old Town, then moved to Goddard Avenue which I was told was labelled ‘bloater avenue’ during the railway era as it was there where managers lived and could afford such luxury. ( A bloater is a fish to kids in the newsroom).

I’ve thoroughly enjoyed my lifetime at Newspaper House. It’s a privileged job which enables you to go places and meet people you wouldn’t normally be able to. It has given me the chance to meet the likes of Cliff Richard, Elton John, Oscar Peterson and Diana Dors, for example.

Swindon Town’s famous victory over Arsenal at Wembley introduced me to Don Rogers and co, shortly after arriving in Wiltshire in 1967, and I have covered the Town ever since.

I’ve been spat on, pelted with dried peas, been hit by a ball full in the face, enabling me to receive the famous trainer's magic sponge from physiotherapist Kevin Morris, which made it all worthwhile.

I had a dart thrown by a three-year-old wonderkid, who didn’t live up to his billing, which ended up embedded in my skull, resulting in a trip to hospital, where I also finished up when slipping on the first tee at Marlborough Golf Club, falling on to my telephoto lens and breaking my ribs.

All in a day’s work with some happy memories. I recall the time when former Town manager Danny Williams got up to give me his seat in a West Bromwich hotel before the League Cup replay with Burnley in the year we won the Cup. He went to wait in the bar as there wasn’t enough seating in the dining room where the players were due to have lunch.

The mighty Glenn Hoddle once made me a cup of tea in his dressing gown and slippers in the vast kitchen of his Ascot home.

Two little self indulgent tales which convince me that I would do it all over again.