Is This My Home

This came about because of a meeting with a group of songwriters in Chester. They meet regularly and set each other challenges to write songs on a given topic or in a specific way. On this occasion the subject was "a place I like". I think it says something about me that, when given a subject as pleasantly innocuous as "a place I like" it turned into a scathing assessment of the country and the Conservative party. There is clearly something wrong with me.

The thought process went something like this: I'd been for a bike ride in the sunshine down towards the river. This was in the Summer of 2020, in the brief gap between COVID lockdowns, you may remember that the Spring of lockdown and much of the Summer was very sunny and warm. Like many people the stress of COVID and lockdowns got to me and the best way I had of alleviating that stress at the time was to get outside and do some exercise. Inevitably though you come home, look at your phone, see the news and it all comes back again. We were in the fetid depths of a rampantly corrupt Tory government doing everything they could to treat COVID as a money-making exercise for their friends instead of as a public health catastrophe. They would gaslight the nation on a daily basis, lying to our faces under the guise of their latest three-word-slogan bunch of nonsense whilst refusing to provide school dinners to deprived children facing the worst summer of their lives, fast-tracking countless billions of expenditure on worthless PPE and projects and, as it transpired later, being shit-faced at law-breaking parties the whole time.

It's hard to be proud of a country where this happens. This is my home, but whilst it remains corrupted by Tory scum I have no sense of belonging here.

You can listen to Is This My Home? below and read the super-cheerful lyrics.