IT IS the line on my CV that I have been asked about at every job interview - what is potato roguing?
Six years ago that would have been a mystery to me too. When I thought of a summer job in 1999, I didn't know a Lady Rosetta from a Maris Piper, and wouldn't have known a Record groundkeeper if it caught me in the tubers.
But after hundreds of ho
urs walking drills, digging out plants with blackleg or severe mosaic, and rogues - that is, plants of the wrong variety - while getting soaked and sunburned in equal measure, I got the hang of it.
Like all jobs, there were good days and bad. One day we could be roguing six-inch healthy plants in glorious sunshine, the next battling disease-ridden triffids in a monsoon.
Some days I felt like Charlie Sheen in
Platoon, up to my armpits in potato plants and peering into the mist, waiting for the Vietcong. After watching fellow roguers washed down drills and convinced that low-flying RAF Tornadoes were using us for target practice, we christened one difficult field Hamburger Hill.
A word of advice to would-be roguers: always choose to sweat in waterproofs rather than get soaked in shorts and T-shirt. It has been scientifically proved that, when an underdressed roguer is at the furthest point possible from a vehicle or shelter, it will rain. Heavily.
Given its reasonable rate of pay with fresh air guaranteed, potato roguing has been a popular summer job. But it carries responsibility. When inspected for certification by a representative of the Scottish Agricultural Science Association (SASA), a poorly-rogued field can be the difference between £150 a tonne quality seed and £5 a tonne cattle feed.
So to qualify as a roguer means a two-week college course, learning to distinguish 40 different varieties by their foliage and to identify a range of diseases. Even after passing the course, the first field can be daunting. But most roguers soon get their eye in and the thrill of the first spotting was like cracking a magic-eye puzzle for the first time.
Spotting rogues with different coloured flowers was always my favourite part of the job. Fellow roguers were usually guaranteed to be even more colourful, from Trainspotting territory in Edinburgh to those who'd had Prince William fag for them at Eton - and a good laugh with both never far away.
Neither of us knew at the time, but I also used to give lifts to a future Scottish rugby international. Hours spent hauling tonnes of diseased and smelly blackleg plants from one end of a field to the other clearly did his career no harm. And the sight of him tackling an escaped sheep, tucking it under his arm before calmly dropping the stunned animal over a fence, is not a sight I will forget.
Unfortunately, something else I won't forget is the sight of another male roguer wandering up and down the field wearing nothing but a glove - and it wasn't on his hand.
Paddy O'Neill, leader of the squad I joined as a teenager, began his own roguing career in 1984 and travels from his Nottingham home to spend six summer weeks in a farm cottage and Scottish tattie fields.
"It's just a total change from my normal routine," he says, referring to his job in a British Sugar laboratory. "I love the Borders and I enjoy working outside during the summer. Roguing attracts interesting characters, and you often find the most interesting make the best roguers. It's very satisfying when a field passes inspection."
The peak years saw him lead squads of up to 25. This year there were only nine regulars, plus me for a one-day "refresher". The Scottish seed potato hectarage continues to tumble, from 14,609 in 1995 to 10,548 this year, because of falling prices.
"There have been poor returns in recent years," says Alistair Redpath, chief executive of leading seed potato company Pseedco, "because there have been more suppliers chasing fewer customers. People are either having to invest to modernise or change to growing ware [for eating] crops."
Dr Stuart Wale, head of SAC crop services, says: "There's no money in it, simple as that. The pressure to produce quality potatoes is very high. If it costs £1,500 to grow an acre of seed and you produce 12 tonnes an acre, you need £125 a tonne just to break-even. Unless you've got a good contract, you are going to find that tough. So seed growers are going out of business."
Even so, Scotland exported 70,000 tonnes of seed potatoes last year, about 7 per cent of the world market, as well as supplying UK growers.
In these high-tech days, is there a future for good, old-fashioned hand roguing as part of that industry?
"It might at some stage be superseded, no pun intended," says O'Neill, "because it's so labour-intensive.
"But it's been around a long time and no-one's come up with anything to replace it. Farmers are willing to pay for a squad to spend five days in a field because the whole value of the crop can hang on the roguing."
Richard Allwood, one of O'Neill's stalwarts since 1991, agrees, adding: " I would like to keep roguing as long as I can, because it means I'm fit and healthy. But I don't think I could do it from home.
"I think it would be horrible to get out of your own bed every morning, but to get out of that" - pointing to a tiny mattress on the squad's cottage floor - "is a pleasure."
