LONDON HAD BEEN STIMULATING and interesting, but I think sometimes you have to step out of something and look back at it to see it in its entirety. For example, if you are in house you can walk around the rooms, take it all in and describe each one, but you can't describe the house as a whole until you look at it from outside.

I was walking up Bold Street in Liverpool on one of our visits back home with David Evans. In the bright sunlight, I realized just how much I was missing the city. I thought, ‘God, this is a beautiful place with beautiful people’, and I really wanted to come back and live here again. It was our home after all, yet there we were living in London. I went to the Everyman Theatre and saw Ian Davies (now acting under the stage name of Ian Hart) in Dream of Dreams. David's new group, The Riotous Hues (Of Modern Colour), played and they were great too.

I talked to Jeanette about my feelings and she agreed to move back ‘home’. We had both grown a lot down in London but we felt that we should now be back up in the ’Pool. I wanted to start a band in Liverpool. I would call it ‘The La's’ and I would get Lee Mavers in to work with (not that I had even mentioned it to him!) and there would be no turning back.

When I told Carl about our plans he decided to take our flat on in Camden Road and work the album from London. And he arrived in the van a week late! Typical.

If I had learnt anything from our stay in London amidst all that energy, writing and collaging I'd say it would be this:

On our return to Liverpool, after being collected from the coach station by my Dad, we drove through Huyton and standing there at the bus stop on Archway Road the first person I saw was Lee Mavers. Surely this was an important sign that all was in place and in order.