I think this is my favourite song on the EP – I don’t really say that much because I like ganging up on my own music – our first album is rubbish, too cheerful and throwaway, slightly disjointed and really unfinished in places, I like the second album a lot better but it still has bits that I could do without…. I have a fear of hearing my voice without reverb because it is not a technically pleasant sound – but I’m the only singer we have so just have to get on with it – stuff like this haunts me.

Which makes it rare for me to say: yep I like that song. But this one I do like. It’s real and it is honest.

The majority of it was written in a five minute break during a rehearsal we had in February, an anathema to the banging of drums. It is quite weird but a lot of songs I am writing at the minute happen very quickly like this in stolen moments and are very simple in structure and chord progression (they are a little quieter too). The melody was there straight away and then the line “we always seem to denigrate ourselves at the point of being” came into my head. As a species I suppose we constantly let each other down just as we are close to being nice.

When it came to finishing the lyrics I knew that I wanted the song to be about the assault of the right wing media on “THE SINGLE MOTHER”. Nothing is simple yet you would think it was reading the likes of the Mail and Express – their pathological disregard for a single woman with children is bemusing… It is disgraceful that anyone should be able to taint the arrival of a child by casting aspersions on a mother because of her social situation.

Mickey allowed me to finish off the recording on my own while he was on paternity leave (probably a mistake as it meant he had to do quite a bit of tidying pre-mix) and so I went a little crazy with the harmonies but I just loved recording them – it was really fun to do and seemed to give the song better shape. Plus I get away with some finger picking which is always nice and a little bass flutter here and there. Standard.

Here are the words….

Tears on the abdomen
Of a woman but it’s ok
For she has a baby.
Flexibly skiving with
Benefits driving the Daily
Mail says it’s a holiday

We always seem to denigrate
Ourselves again at the point of being

Fear kills
Even the most
Fecund of seconds
And I hold these close
Why should
Having a child
And a career
Not be reconciled?

We always seem to denigrate
Ourselves again at the point of being

So lost
The ephemeral everywhere
No cost
That our future should have to bear
A sure start
Has unraveled been turned into
Dust and to gravel to trample upon

You must feel so proud
Stigmatising every single mother
While your own world’s falling down.