My pen in my hand and some paper in the other.

Well I am sitting here with pen in one hand and a piece of paper in the other, wondering what I am going to put into the paper from the pen – of course neither of these things exist, any more, as they have been replaced by a keyboard and a screen.

Time goes along and we are in a lock-down and not allowed to go anywhere without permission from the police.

At the bottom of the garden there are three of my neighbours and we take it in turns to dig the tunnel.

We figure if we start digging near the back fence, which joins all our gardens, we should be able to sneak through and get as far as Pinner Green by Christmas; 2021.

I have never been a fella who feels cooped up when at home as lots of times it wouldn't worry me if I never opened the door again. I have everything I want here, all the things I have purchased over the years: guitar – in fact two guitars, a banjo. six harmonicas, at least, a pair of drum sticks but no drums.

Never bothered me before; I used to be the solo drummer when I was in the army cadets between the ages of fourteen and eighteen. One of my duties was to teach the drummers joining the band how to play a military drum. In the breaks in the canteen – the NAFFI – we would sit around with our sticks and practise our paradiddles and quavers on a table. So I can do that but when I have recorded songs, here, I have used a drum machine. Although once in a while I would use my fingers on the desk, a packing case and on one song I slapped my bare knees; now that hurt.

The upshot of it is that I am not using either of my guitars, harmonicas or drum sticks; why? Because at the moment I have so much time to spare that I haven't got the time.

I am editing my little film but nine times out of ten when I sit down to do it I notice a joke on Face Book, or a comment I have to answer or a brilliant saying will come in to my head and I have to put that in my 'news feed' instead. Unfortunately, like a drunken insult, it doesn't look so brilliant in the cold light of day.

I was talking to a pal of mine the other day, shooting the shit and reminiscing, putting the world to right and the thought came to me: I was like this as a child! My folks would send me out to play and I would stand at the bottom of the garden looking at the house. My dad would come out and say 'go and play!'

It was the same when we went on holiday. I liked the caravan (sorry my American friends a caravan – a trailer??) who knows - and I liked the tent when I went away with the boy scouts – I just found a photo of me when I was 5¾ so you can see how inquisitive I was; I look quite satisfied.

That was when I had been at school for 12 months. 

I hated school and that was a school photograph. That was the one my dad carried around with him in his wallet. I remember when I first saw it as I can't remember looking at it when I looked like that I also remember school at that time and I hated it. I couldn't see the point of going there. I suppose I found out all the kids there spoke with a different accent from me and maybe that confused me. 

I walked to school with a neighbour and on the way we would walk down St Paul's Road, in Birmingham, which had a railway bridge going across. The roadway, under the bridge, was very small, maybe just about enough room to drive a car through, but my mother wanted me, when I went by myself a year or so later, to cross the road outside Doctor Cronin's surgery. 

I could never, even at that age, figure out why it would be safer to cross the road by the doctors. Maybe she thought if I got hit by a truck the doctor would come out and save me. So I would walk with the gang of kids and their mams and let them go ahead to cross the road where it narrowed and I would nip over through the morning traffic by the croakers – salvation or bandages.

I have often wondered if this place, the UK, became something like Yugoslavia, with several fighting factions, that we would be figuring out a way to get to Pinner – half a mile away. Would I go over the gardens, sneak through the trees or get into the River Pinn and swim there. The River Pinn, by the way, is hard to see, as it's in a ditch at the side of some roads. It's near our current doctors' surgery which would please my mother but the fact is I would have to walk down the river as there probably isn't enough water around there to sustain me – it gets a bit deeper by the doctors so if I get into difficulty in the water the doctor can come out and save me.