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Fig.1. Self-Portrait - early 1977 - age 15 - 6b pencil drawing on cartridge paper

Before and after ...

Fig.2. Self-Portrait - early 2010 - age 49 - 6b pencil drawing on cartridge paper

But what does it tell you about what is going on in that head? This is what interests me. I am still the boy and always will be. I am the child who can remember his first day at school age 4 years and 11 months, who can remember two nursery schools before that too.

P.S. And an age-appropriate photo will replace the happy Dad of 9 years ago that you currently see. Intellectually I feel like a 19 year old - fighting fit and argumentative. The way I will go down here on in.

I have never gone grey, not lost much hair, still swim a mile or more a week ... avoid the sun, but tan easily.

I do NOT need reading glasses ... but my skin, in places is starting to look like rice paper ... I'm a baby of the 60s.

Thrilled to be alive, highly mixed up in e-learning ... a century ago (like my grandfather) it would have been planes, motorbikes and cars.

About to go out and eat on an extraordinary evening on the South Downs with views across the English Channel with the three people who matter the most to me in all the world, my wife and children.

Have I done my bit?

When they emerge from university and have five years steady employment, with a partner ...

When do you let go?

Given than my mother's parents, aunts and uncles reached their 90s ...

I feel, and celebrate that we never let go.

If in 50 years time my mother and my siblings and our cousins and second cousins and our children are all still present ?

• I want to have a role in the Olympics.
• I want to have a role in remembering the First World War.
• I want to be a grandparent.
• I'd like to be by the sea and on it most days.
• I'd like people to grin with pleasure feeling they've achieved something extra-ordinary and unexpected.
• This for me is the OU.

P.P.S. I am neither jingoistic or necessarily a patriot. The above is a statement of circumstance. Those millions of us living here ought to reflect more often on how great it is to live a life in peace, with food, a roof over our heads, clothing and friends. The challenge of the next 100 years is to educate some people not to abuse it: flytipping stinks, littering is no better. There are too many people in our society who frankly don't give a monkey's +@#