From Dungeons and Dragons to crafting instruments: Council staff share lockdown activities

Staff members at Shropshire Council have been sharing their lockdown experiences, and some of them have been using the extra time at home to indulge in their creative side.

Clive Yates, a part-time health and safety officer at the authority spent the lockdown indulging in his passion of making musical instruments.

Since the outbreak he has made a pine base guitar, a novelty heart-shaped guitar, and has restored an old double base which had lost its neck.

Clive, a 64-year-old father-of-two, says he first started making instruments about 10 years ago, after hearing how somebody had made a guitar for American blues star Seasick Steve.

"Since the lockdown I have been working from home, and I haven't been able to get out and about much, so I started spending more time in the garage," he says.

The two guitars were made from 100-year-old pine which had been reclaimed from the roof beams of a friend's cottage.

"He had left them to be thrown out, so I asked him if I could have that," he says.

"The strap buttons are turned from old bolts, and the D- and G-string anchor is made from a Norwegian Kroner coin, which already has a hole in the middle, and an automotive brake fitting."

Clive says the heart-shaped guitar started out as a bit of a joke, and the strap buttons were again made from old bolts.

The double bass came into his possession minus its neck, so Clive fashioned a new one out of an old door frame.

"The neck is made using seven pieces of wood," he says

"The tail-piece was made from the same hardwood, and utilises a bit of old bone that my dog was chewing. That's the white line the strings pass over."

Paula Korsak, a finance officer from council, used the extra time at home to make a new friend – literally.

"I had this old mannequin head, so I thought it would be really fun to make a mannequin," she says.

"It started as just a bit of fun to cheer people up in these difficult times.

"I called him Jeremy and took him out to take part in the NHS Clap for Carers each week.

"Our neighbours loved him, we started dressing him in different outfits, we had him dressed as a cricketer, in a football kit, we even had him snorkelling, we got really creative.

"Then the neighbour opposite made a girlfriend for him, and we called her Jessica.

"Another neighbour made Colonel Tom Moore, but we then we made him into the vicar, and he married Jeremy and Jessica in a YouTube wedding."

A new arrival will be on the way soon, adds Paula, as Jeremy and Jessica are soon to become parents.

"Another neighbour is making the babies," adds Paula, 52.

Meanwhile Pip Bayley, who works in marketing, has used his spare time to create terrains for the popular Dungeons and Dragons game out of his household junk.