It’s funny how the setting of your life changes. The community project building became the site of my first kiss (what's up, Richard, how’s the kids?). The parks, the pool, the sports grounds – all places to loiter and nod along to boys' opinions of bands I’d never listened to (and then aggressively research them later, which is how you end up becoming a music journalist apparently). Couches became vehicles upon which to do hand stuff, the woods became somewhere to wee after getting tipsy on precisely one can of Kronenbourg and thrilling absolutely no one with some performative same-sex action.

The media almost always portrays areas like these as bleak and deprived. Rarely do you hear about them in the news, unless it's in a story about people being unemployed, in poverty or on drugs. A BBC story from 2013 titled "The unbearable sadness of the Welsh valleys" described the area as so depressing that not even weeds grow there, which is a line so melodramatic not even R.S. Thomas would have published it. But despite being cut off from things physically, because the bus service operated on a "once every whenever we fancy it" basis, I don’t ever recall feeling restricted. In my view (I probably don't have to mention at this point that I'm an only child) there were too many secret hideouts for it to be boring, too much space to explore – yourself, or someone else – without much scrutiny. It enabled this weird state of lawlessness within a bubble.