Twice in the past week a student called me 'sir'. The first time it happened, when a girl was asking how to find the Page Auditorium, I shrugged it off as a one-off incident -- perhaps she was just an overly polite person.

Last night when I went for a run I had to evade a guy who was painting graffiti under a bridge, and he said: 'oh, I'm sorry sir', without any irony.

Am I getting old?