My book and CD, The Key To A Happy Life, are now both complete and should soon be available to buy on my website. Also, I hope, as an ebook and paperback on Amazon. The album should eventually be on Spotify too. I’m also planning a book launch in a month or so which will involve as many of my folkie friends as possible singing fun material in keeping with the theme.

It’s been a long slog – from last Easter when I began writing pieces, poems, articles, memoirs, etc, not planning at that time to put them into a book. Most of the initial material was written within a two week holiday to France – just anarchic scribbles really – but then re-written and extended, etc, on my return. I included song lyrics that seemed to fit, along with the stories behind them, which then encouraged me to make audio recordings. Rather than make just acoustic versions, I decided to use whatever enhanced the sound including electric keyboards and any instruments available. I wasn’t going to release these recordings but have since done so as a ‘demo disc’ because, I feel, they capture the mood, even if a little rough and ready. There is also another album (an EP) in the pipeline, Not Just A Silly Hat, which will just have four numbers on it – all about other singer-songwriters – Woody Guthrie, Lead Belly, John Newton and Richard Thompson.

One of my main problems now is marketing, since neither the book or album fall into a neat category. Maybe, some might say, it’s a self-indulgent exercise but it’s what I wanted and I’m very happy with the result. The only slight disappointment, as Sofie (my wife) pointed out to me this morning, is that it doesn’t offer any ‘key’. But ain’t that life? As it says in the book, it’s the search that matters.

Songs also free on: https://soundcloud.com/mauricebaker-1