MY boss says I'm turning into a Grumpy Old Man - and I'm not going to argue.

Yes, I've been known to bang on about speeding drivers, but as the (very effective) TV ad showing the little girl lying at the side of the road explains: "It's 30 for a reason."

I've also had the odd gripe about the nasty little thugs who infest our streets after dark (and increasingly during the day), yet anyone who saw yesterday's horrifying front page picture of Howard Green, whose head was used for football practice by a gang of Bournemouth's finest, will surely admit I've got a point.

And, I'll hold my hands up, I've also chuntered on about cheating footballers and foul-mouthed fans - but then can you think of another occasion that might involve practically the whole of Hampshire's police force, as did Saturday's FA Cup tie between Saints and Pompey?

I think grumpiness comes with age - it's unavoidable, like hair loss, liver-spots, sagging paunches and haunches and those funny little grunting noises you make as you get in and out of cars.

In my case it's caused by worrying what sort of a world this is in which to bring up my precious children. And I suppose there's also a bit of "not like this in my day" in there too.

Which brings me neatly on to a little jaunt I took at the weekend, along with my 11-year-old son to my old school. We were just pottering about, me telling him about other famous old boys, ("Sir Isaac Newton, you can still see where he carved his name in the library, and ... er ... Nicholas Parsons, from Sale of the Century"), when a man approached and asked politely whether he might be able to help. (What he meant to say, of course, was: "What do you think you're doing, wandering about the school on a Sunday?", but he was much too nice for that.)

It turned out he was a teacher there, and had been since just after I left, so we had a good old chin-wag and he gave us a guided tour, with me saying to my boy things like: "Ah yes, this gleaming room full of computers was once the science lab, which I nearly destroyed, armed only with a bunsen-burner and a pinch of some mystery powder, earning myself six of the best from old Squiffy, or was it Smudger?" and: "This is the dining room, where every day we'd be force-fed boiled cabbage so old it had turned into a green mush, and it never did me any harm - er, what was your name again?"

But the highlight of our visit was surely looking at a picture of the whole school, taken in 1971, with yours truly slap-bang in the middle of the back row, sporting a haystack of hair and a hard-man scowl that could curdle milk at a hundred paces.

If my editor thinks I'm grumpy now, he should thank his lucky stars he didn't know me when I was a teenager.

First published: Feb 1