Fishcakes

Here, Sleaford Mods vocalist Jason Williamson remembers growing up in a family where money was tight and eating fishcakes was a culinary treat. Makeshift purple kitchens And chip shop birthdays there with no nothings Second hand but I don't mind Scouring the papers at Christmas time Williamson told Mojo magazine: "I didn't want to do a cheesy. 'Oh, we were poor but we were happy.' But I started thinking about the times when I was a kid, having secondhand Christmas presents or going to the chip shop for my birthday because my mum couldn't afford to do anything really special. The chip shop was great anyway. I sometimes worry that perhaps I've overplayed it and it's a bit of a sob story, and I didn't want it to come across like that. I wanted to try and get that idea of being eight years old in Grantham in 1978."

This is one of two songs on Spare Ribs where Williamson writes about his childhood, the other being "Mork n Mindy," which is set five years later. He explained to Mojo how the two tracks were triggered by lockdown thoughts after he injured his back. "Gyms closed, so I was in the garden, going like the clappers, trying to make up for exercise I would have done at the gym, and obviously I haven't got any of the apparatus. I had an operation on my back when I was a kid - I was born with a mild form of spina bifida where the nerves in my back were all tangled up and a little bit dodgy. When I was about 10 or 11, it got to the point where I couldn't walk so I went to the hospital and this crack team of surgeons sorted it out. But every now and then I get an injury because its quite a sensitive area. Especially this time round, I was full of codeine and every painkiller going and I started thinking about childhood. I spoke to one of the surgeons at Queen's Med (Medical Centre) in Nottingham, and he knew the guy who did the operation so it was quite emotional and I started thinking about my childhood and where I lived and I started exploring that a bit more."