By Jim Kerr, Simple Minds

As you’ll most likely know, many of Europe’s workers go on holiday in August. Also in England, August is considered the height of summer and the month that many families take their vacations.
Scotland however is out of step with them.

In the country of my birth the schools break up in June and continue through July. By early August, summer is considered to be heading towards the dying embers. The football season has already begun and Scots throughout the country are usually headed back to work/school etc.

Such is the way we were raised and I guess that pattern is still written though us. And so after a good long break away from writing and recording, Charlie and I went back to work this past week.
In our case there are no external obligations. Our own ‘Bosses,’ we work for ourselves and have done so for decades. Regardless of that, even though it’s 35 degrees and the sea outside our window shimmering turquoise blue – with the locals doing a roaring trade selling granite in the cafes and bars in town – it is nevertheless now August! And with that realisation we felt the call of our work bringing us back to the studio, where we are able to blot out all else that is going on in the world and lose ourselves in the task at hand.

That challenge is of course made easier if you love your work as we do.
In that sense we consider ourselves to be among the luckiest people in the world.

JK