If you read my first book, you’ll know that I once tried to be a songwriter.

I was a teenager at the time, and I wasn’t very good at it. I could blame the fact that I was growing up in very un-angry, un-rockandroll surroundings; or the fact that I was heavily into progressive rock at the time; or the fact that I was on target to horribly bomb in my English ‘A’ level. Or I could simply accept that I didn’t have the first fucking clue about what I was doing.

“We are the aliens, we come from the Planet Og; We look like a cross between a monkey and a dog.” Yeah, take that Paul Simon!!!

It was sooner rather than later that I decided that lyrics weren’t my thing. As did the rest of the band.

A little while ago I wrote a bit of an essay about Jake Thackray and Georges Brassens, and how they’d been the inspiration for Frederic Debreu. With Jake’s last will and testament long-since having been read, I couldn’t send him a gushing fan-boy note with a copy of the book, but on a whim I sent one to Paul Thompson instead; he’s the man behind jakethackray.com and a general authority upon and mover behind All Things Jake.

I’d written some lyrics when I’d been writing the book, partly as a sort of background-immersion type thing; partly to ensure that I was consistent when I quoted them back to myself throughout the pages. These were worked up into a little promo booklet to go with advance copies of the book (there are still a couple available if you contact the publisher). So I popped one of those in Paul’s envelope as well.

To cut a long story short, Paul replied unexpectedly, having set the lyrics to music. Which was a little flabbergasting, given that my last musical collaboration was about twenty years ago, with a girl who I met via the ‘Loot’ small ads. Anyway, between the two of us, we’ve created a library of lost Frederic Debreu songs. Translated to the English, of course.

Here’s one: it debuted at the Lymm Festival in Cheshire this month. See what you think.