I had to sell my Fender acoustic and my Ibanez hollowbody electric guitars when I left England behind. My Peavey telecaster clone went to a friend. That was five months ago.

In many ways, that was the moment in which the enormous size of my situation really hit me. No guitars. I had never been without a guitar – my Dad’s was always around when I was a child, and I acquired the first guitar of my own when I was still at high school.

In other ways, I suppose the uncertainty of life here in Thailand had stopped me buying a guitar so far. The feeling that at any point, it could all go wrong, and that I would have to return, a failure, to England.

Today, after buying the pictured Takamine Dragon, I guess I finally feel at home.