IT’S 49 years this month since I cast my slogan- spattered haversack into the dustbin, screwed up my school tie into a ball and drop kicked it on top of the wardrobe, and revelled in the glory that I would never have to endure the mysteries of valency and Venn diagrams.

I could tear up my Latin exercise book, with the defiant doggerel “Latin is a language as dead as dead can be, first it killed the Romans, and now it’s killing me” scrawled on the brown paper cover, and try to forget that the square on the hypotenuse is equal to the sum of the squares on the other two sides; whatever a hypotenuse may be.

At sweet 16, my schooldays were over, and I was entering the world of work for the very first time. My mind was set on being a journalist from a very early age, and in those days, there was no need even to stay on for A-levels, let alone accumulate a lifetime of crippling debt by going to university to take the first faltering steps towards the Street of Shame.

A quick chat with the editor of one of Macclesfield’s two weekly newspapers was enough to secure me a job, on the strict understanding that I passed at least five of the eight O-levels I had sat a few months before.

I was confident of passing at least six, and when the results came out, I was delighted to find that I had passed all eight I sat, including the dreaded maths and Latin.

So I was in, thrown into the deep end of the exciting world of magistrates’ court, getting entangled in the slub satin and stephanotis of wedding reports and learning that councils are always singular, while sports teams are always plural.

I thundered away at an ancient Underwood typewriter, typing with two fingers on small sheets of old newsprint called copy paper, where my carefully crafted words of wisdom were treated with kindly disdain by the ancient sub editor, who was all of 23 years old.

Every time the phone rang, I leapt several inches in the air as I had never used a telephone in my life – they were something that only posh people had.

Modern day health and safety professionals would blanch at the facilities available to keep employees safe, the only fire precautions being a galvanised bucket, painted red and with the word “fire” emblazoned on the side.

It was filled with water, the level of which fluctuated wildly, depending on how many times it was knocked over in the lunchtime rush to the Swan with Two Necks, or how many times it was topped up by the senior reporters who could not be bothered going downstairs and across a draughty yard to the single outside loo.

Heating was provided by a single, three-bar electric fire, but alas, this suffered a terminal malfunction when the fat from several pork sausages we were attempting to grill on the appliance produced a blinding blue flash. For some reason, the fire never worked again.

As a growing lad, I was perpetually hungry, and for the first time in my life, I had money in my pocket to squander on fare which had previously been beyond my meagre means.

My £6 5s a week meant I could wallow in the glories of fish, pies, steak and kidney puddings and tripe, all served with chips, and occasionally, on what became known as pig days, I would work my way through the menu – and still have room for half a dozen magical Brassington’s yellow buns.

The paper was part of a series owned by a company 12 miles away in Stockport, where it was printed every Thursday.

One of the drawbacks of the job was that every so often, I would have to make that 12-mile journey with a senior reporter to “help” put the paper together and suffer the systematic bullying of the composing room staff.

The printers regarded everyone from Macclesfield as a backward hayseed, and I was far too shy to stand up for myself as the merciless teasing gathered pace.

It all came to an end when the main protagonist grabbed my tie to pull my face within an inch of his to mouth some new insult – and fell flat on his back when the clip-on tie I was wearing came off in his hand.

The composing room erupted into laughter, and I had no further problems.