Even when I haven't had money, I found money to travel. It's a luxury that's a kind of necessity, I think.

At about the age of ten, my friends and I discovered the joys of sitting in graveyards drinking merrydown cider and kissing and stealing our elder siblings' records.

I've also been writing with my guitarist, Ted Barnes, and he's amazing. Writing with him has taught me a lot about my own writing process, in the sense that it's incredably personal to write with someone else from scratch.

To me songwriting is more like redemption. I can extract the poison or the pollen, the essence from a situation and the rest becomes a husk that blows away.

My dad got me a chemistry book one Christmas and I burnt the garden shed down. I remember there was the most beautiful smell forever after in the remains.

Heaven is what we spend our lives trying to find.

I don't read music; I taught myself guitar.