It’s not easy to write this column during lockdown. All the events I would normally be taking part in have stopped, and quite rightly so, leaving not a lot to write about. It has also left me, as it has you, sat at home twiddling my thumbs when I'm not at work.

I spend my evenings watching films with my Val. With all the many channels and online streaming services we have you would think we have plenty of viewing options!

Yet, I can easily spend an hour or more scrawling through channels searching for anything I’ve either not seen before or that simply takes my fancy!

My problem is that once I have watched a trailer for a film, which normally shows you all the best bits of the film anyway, I then think I have actually seen that film! So I disregard it as one I have seen when actually I haven’t!

I do however have a guilty viewing pleasure and that is The Masked Singer. On paper it sounds like a silly singing competition but when I started watching it, and got over the fact that I am a grown man watching cartoon type characters singing behind disguises, I really enjoy it.

Even if I don’t know who the celebrity is, I still enjoy the guessing process with all the clues given. The fact that it aires directly after my favourite game show, ‘Catchphrase’ is an added bonus! So there you have my lockdown confession!

My favourite pastime has to be reading. There is something very special to me about books. I enjoy holding a book in my hands and even the smell of a new one.

Do you ever buy a new book and smell its pages? Or is that just me? Anyway, I very rarely read fiction as I like to learn things and develop my knowledge.

I have a vast library of books on all kinds of subjects and I love autobiographies. To learn how someone became who they are and the path they took to get their. That fascinates me.

I can pinpoint the exact moment I fell in love with books. It was at Golden Hill Park in Urmston and I was thirteen years old. I found a small book on a bench. I suspect someone had left it there to be found. It was titled ‘The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam’.

I opened the front cover to find a hand written poem. ‘The book of knowledge I opened wide, and look, I found a life inside. And so today this book I send, to wish you gladness without end.'

That poem stuck in my head. Each book is a life! It made me value and appreciate books. So I am going to keep reading and learning to get me through the rest of this lockdown until we are back to some sense of normality again.