Many years ago now, I wrote a song called You Don’t Have To Be Strong which, among a certain crowd of folk connected to the Kintyre Songwriters Festival here in Campbeltown, became my anthem. It’s also THE favourite of regular reader Steve Byrne.

And Davey Ray Moore , a professional songwriter and performer who heard the song just after I wrote it told me - “that is the direction you should go with your music career”. Hearing another musician speak of a “Career” in regard to my songs was an enormous encouragement at that moment in time.

The career never happened, but the songwriting of course did. And although I have written songs that are in a similar genre to “Strong”, some of which I think are better, in the end I realised that I just couldn’t stick to writing one kind of song.

And I’m very happy with that decision. It definitely hasn’t helped me with the “building an audience” side of things, but it has given me a lot of pleasure and, I think, made me a better songwriter.

Sometimes you do have to be strong in order to follow your heart.