I have come to learn that adulthood is based on a series of unavoidable uncertainties. Money worries, job worries, parenting worries, old people worries, political worries, mortality worries, relationship worries, health worries…the list is endless. No-one knows what the future holds, no-one knows what is coming up next, no-one knows if it is going to be alright in the end, and no-one knows why we are here and what we are supposed to be doing on this earth. As I get older, I realise more and more each day that we can be certain of almost nothing.

The struggle - indeed, the trick - is to figure out how to navigate these uncertainties in a positive way. You can let all these worries terrify you into apathy, or you can acknowledge and accept them, realise that it is futile to say “I’ve just got to get past this and then life will be easier”, and get on with living.

A liminal space is a physical zone which exists for no purpose other than to help you transition from one place to another. No-one visits a stairwell for the purpose of visiting a stairwell - they use it to get from one floor to another. No-one waits in a departure lounge unless they are going somewhere. No-one sits in an empty cinema, unless it is just before a film starts or just after it ends.

But a liminal space can also be a psychological space, a symbolic entity during a period of transition. When we were in “limbo” whilst waiting to see whether or not we would be moving house, almost all of which was beyond our control, this was the most I have ever experienced of being in a liminal space, not physically but emotionally. We couldn't get on with our lives until we knew what was happening. Everything was effectively put on hold until we waited for things to happen that were beyond our control. I felt, more than ever, that life could only resume once we got to a certain point.

To an extent, this was all true. However, much to my frustration, I didn’t then experience a “back to normal” feeling to the extent that I had hoped and expected. Yes, we did resume normality to a degree. But the move changed me, and I will never be the same person as I was before it. For the most part, I feel stronger and wiser than before. But I also feel that my awareness to uncertainty has been opened far more than before, and the initial anxiety has moved on to a general sense of confusion. I am now beyond the threshold. I have moved behind the end of the rainbow. I have gone past the milestone which had previously been the beacon - the “once we have moved, we can…”. And life is still just as tough as it was before.

I have tried desperately to comfort myself with the reassurance that it is ok to exist in a liminal space, and that it isn’t just a linear state of mind. In a way, we are permanently in a liminal space, all of us. Some of our relatives are dying. Some are facing life-threatening operations. Some of our friends are deeply unhappy. Our children are encountering challenges every single day. Brexit could mean the biggest recession we have ever known. Trump may cause a nuclear war. Who knows. Maybe it is ok to exist in uncertainty, and maybe the key is to stop trying to reach “certainty”. Maybe we will be happier by accepting that there is very little that we can do to control anything; and this is alright.

At its core, this is what my new album is about. I think of it as being a comfort blanket, helping me to acknowledge everything, including the sadness, the frivolity, the joy, the whimsy, the anger, the frustration, and the excitement of uncertainty. Some of these songs were written in the last few months, while others are several years old. I selected each of them for this album because they all offer a different perspective on being in limbo, from reassurance (Leave The Light On) to confidence (Fly Fly Fly); from darkness (Making Space) to longing for a simpler time (Elephant’s Back); from acceptance of change (Buckle Up) to loss of control (War of Words). And ultimately, a realisation that all that is really important is growing old with the person I love, Mel (All I Want Is To Grow Old With You).