NOT ONE TO DWELL on what might have been, I looked forward and considered new options.

Lee and Joey called round to the flat in Aigburth to collect some of the gear which had been left in the practice room and gave me a photograph of me playing at the Monro by Glynys Jackson. It was meant to be a nice gesture but it felt like it was the retirement clock. Time to start something else.

Over the following weeks I would see Hamish, Walla and Bernie Nolan and new ideas and collaborations eventually came to pass – not least in the shape of big Danny Dean from the Scheme, who would come down to Aigburth to play music with me.

There had been talk of the music scheme re-opening, and on 23 January 1987 we were allowed back in. But all was not well. One of the family came down and became very defensive, going on to threaten us when we started asking questions. One of the other students, Mark Hughes from Park Road, had already thrown his coat to the floor and started shouting, ‘Come on then – come on!’ But this was how we felt, we'd been used to get funding that hadn't been spent on us! There would have been an almighty fight if I hadn't instructed Mark to ‘rise above it’. Bless his cotton socks, we laughed about it later but we were all unhappy about the state of affairs. The studio the family had promised to build was nowhere near completion and rumours had begun to circulate that a whole lot of money had vanished and staff had blown the whistle to the Manpower Services Commission, so that was why the whole thing had been closed down. We'd been shafted.

It was difficult to cut either the scheme or The La's out of my life. John Power had now asked fellow student Paul Hemmings to play guitar with The La's. I remember when I saw John and Paul for the first time since I'd departed The La's – neither of them could look at me, let alone say anything, but then again, what was there to say? They were in The La's, which I'd started and was now on an upward trajectory and I wasn't in the picture. It was also hard because Paul and I went back quite a long way too.