Bernard Sumner

Where I grew up was a place called Salford, which was the industrial heartland of Manchester. And where I lived in Salford, I could walk to the center of Manchester within about 20 minutes. So I lived really close to the center.

My mother, Laura Sumner, had cerebral palsy. She was born absolutely fine, but after about three days, she started having convulsions that left her with a condition that would confine her to a wheelchair her entire life.

Early in the 1990s, I flew alone in a dandelion-yellow, single-engine, 180-horsepower Piper Cherokee from Westchester County Airport in New York westward to the Rocky Mountains, landing and refuelling a good many times in middle-sized cities and towns along the way.