Most teenagers seem to accept staying at home – I don't think my younger self would have

Shortly before the time of the virus, I was waiting for a train to Birmingham from Hagley station. Hagley is where I grew up and where my parents live. A few teenagers were hanging around with not much to do, just as 40 years ago my mates and I hung around with not much to do. I couldn’t take my eyes off them. It was haunting, as if they were ghosts of my childhood. I thought ghosts were of old, dead people, but these callow youths were alive and kicking.

I wonder where those young people are now. As far as I can see, and from what I have heard from my daughters, our much-maligned youth are respecting the command to stay at home more than their elders. Cynics might suggest this is because most of them can’t be arsed to go out at the best of times. Or maybe groups of them are holed up on the quiet in bedrooms, smoking weed or God knows what, while talking or watching drivel. But I doubt it. I don’t think they are such a bad bunch.

Obviously, they have the advantage of social media to keep communicating, but I have been thinking about how it would have been for me if this had come to pass in the early 1980s. I really don’t think I could have borne it.

In December 1981, we were snowed off school for several days. Oh, the joy. My mate Rich lived just up from the station in Hagley. Along with another friend we played snooker on a tiny table in his basement all day, every day. I can’t imagine any public health edict would have put a stop to that.

Rich is presently locked down in Malaysia. “The three of us would have had to self-isolate together,” he said. “And you’d still never have beaten me.”