GLASGOW — With the winding down of the government furlough scheme, a Bearsden estate agent is looking forward to sharing his lockdown poetry with his co-workers as he returns to work next week.

Franklin Gothic, 28, the self-proclaimed ‘Bard of Bearsden’ took up writing poetry in an effort to inject some meaning into his life and now believes reading his works to his colleagues is the first step to international poetry stardom.

“It was just something to do, like,” said Mr Gothic. “Jeremy Kyle was taken off the telly and all that time alone made me start to have really deep thoughts like, what if we all run out of bog-roll? and can you catch coronavirus from toilet seats? Stuff people really want to know about.

“I remembered that at school my teacher thought I was really good at poetry. In fact, when I showed her one of my poems, she said, “Well, it’s not exactly Shakespeare, is it Frank?” and if you’re getting compared to Shakespeare at age 13, well, I don’t think I need say anymore.

“As a result, she promoted me to the group that does acrostic poems where you write your name down the side then come up with lines beginning with each letter: F – Frank is in class 3B and likes Dairylee Dunkers, and stuff like that.

“So, I sat down at my laptop during lockdown and started crafting poetry, just like Shakespeare would have done, and words just kept coming out. Like diarrhea. That’s a simile like what we poets use.

“I can’t wait to read it to my colleagues. We had a Zoom ‘catch-up’ meeting in June and I was going to read some of it to them but, suddenly, they all started experiencing connection problem or had to go on their daily walk, so I guess they’re pretty excited to hear it when I come into the office next week.

“Poetry has really changed my life. I’ve started getting into the lifestyle: because of lockdown I’ve grown my hair long and I have a velvet jacket that I wore on a stag-do. I’ve started staring off into the middle-distance for no apparent reason and I’m currently top bidder on a neck ruff on Ebay.