"I started writing it in early 2003. My marriage had just broken down. Words cannot really describe the state I was in, but writing the songs was a way of dealing with it.

I was getting out to the singer/songwriter nights in Belfast more. I liked Gary Gates' songs. We started rehearsing together and wrote a couple of songs using a brainstorming approach for lyrics that I'd never used before.

I met Zi who rained down lovely rainy poetry on me. I definitely am into collaboration from now on!!

Then I read Paul Auster's "Book of Illusions" which inspired "Mexico". So now I'm resolved to read more books, too (university lecturers don't find time to read books!).

I gave my old friend John McNairn (who played on both earlier albums) a rough demo of the songs.

 

I was really shy because they were so personal and (I thought) too sad. He encouraged me to record them and we practised a piano part for "Let Me Grieve". We recorded and mixed it over 5 days between July and September 2004 at Iain McKinna's Offbeat Studios on the Royal Mile in Edinburgh.

The Fringe was on and the music from the buskers was coming up from the street below. Sometimes it was so good we'd break off from recording and go down to see it.

Gary flew over from Belfast and recorded all his parts in one day (good work!).

Just before the last session my wife finally moved out. I wrote "Mother Earth" and felt for the first time that I was gaining some distance to the whole thing. I just managed to record it before time and money ran out".