Tiny little Stephen and INCREDIBLY PREGNANT Debbie arrive - he with enormous appetite for playing bass and she with unquenchable thirst for lemonade. Sadly everything's shut so she must go without, but there is plenty of bassing for Steve. Once more the amp goes into the bath for WHFM and Sundial. Still don't know which one will be first single. There would be much less work to do if we could decide.

Tuesday 4th May:
Another remarkable piece of luck: a guy called Carl who works in Film&TV post-production is looking out for small projects that he can try out his new editing machine on and has offered to make a video for us FOR FREE! Me and Matts go to meet him in his editing suite. He looks like an evil super-villain but seems to know what he's talking about. Will shoot on digital video against a bluescreen in one afternoon and he'll put it all together afterwards. He's just saved us about fifteen grand. Cool.

Wednesday 5th May:
Discover Matt has erased my lovely wah track by mistake. Angry. Do chunky guitar on WFMH at Matt's house. Don't care about annoying his neighbours cos he's moving soon.

Thursday 6th May:
Travel with Matt and studio to Hampshire to where Mum and Dad live with their lovely piano and lack of neighbours. Recording pianos is known to require great expertise which we don't have it, but it sounds pretty good anyway. Unfortunately, despite being recently tuned it is flatter than the instruments on tape so we spend half an hour changing the tape speed to compensate which makes our heads go funny. Eventually it sounds in tune so Matt whacks down Scary Mary, Hello there, Sundial and WFMH. They begin to sound quite good.

We're ahead of schedule so I do crazy guitar on WFMH (incidentally, here I used my FRET KING ESPRIT 5, a wonderful guitar I heartily recommend to any player) which really brings the track to life, although there are still massive gaps where the bridges go. Do a couple of tracks on Sundial, fuse my amplifier, replace not-very-good guitar on Scary Mary. Still not very good, but can't be fucked to do it again.

Matt does vocal on WFMH before parents return from evening of skittles and we head back to London feeling like we've done a good day's work. For once in our goddamned lives.

Friday 7th May:
Relocate studio to Kerry's everyone-in-the-house-is-at-work-all-day flat and Matt records lead vocal on Sundial and another lead vocal on WFMH. Getting tired of heaving boxes up stairs.

Saturday 8th May:
Another piece of good fortune - our friend Robin who also works for a post-production company has allowed us to come and use one of his studios to record some drums. It takes lots of thinking and many leads to successfully mate his studio with ours but we manage it. Matt sets up kit amongst crazy assortment of items used for recording sound effects; doorway to nowhere (with letterbox to nowhere), little stairway to nowhere, marble slab, concrete slab, carpet slab, sink… if you pull up that bit there's a gravel pit and sandpit and grass-sounding bit. Secretly plan to record Matt walking to kit through a thousand environments but it doesn't happen.

Eventually everything is working and we do takes on Give my heart. MVB is on top form today and drums sound great. Attempt to record further drum takes on WFMH due to suspicions of "loose timing". This proves to too hard and besides, existing take sounds fine. Although we could do the bass again. Brian and Geri arrive to see everything for first time. Play them WFMH and Sundial in progress and they say "we think WFMH". We go "OK" but plan to continue work on others anyway.

Record extra snare track for Hello there choruses and then feel guilty for making Rob come in for eight hours on his day off. But he loves to work.

Sunday 9th May:
Getting sick of all this work. Stephen arrives to put bass on Give my heart. Record unbelievably silly fill at the end of the bridge - we nearly kept it but it was just a bit too unbelievably silly. Replace bass on WFMH a bit more in time this time. Record Steve's backing vocal on WFMH and then me and his parts on Sundial and double-tracks. It's good to sing.

Monday 10th May:
Make use of modular nature of studio as Matt takes one of the machines away to do vocal on Hello there while I finally get the solo right on Scary Mary. Replace missing wah track on Hello there and then attempt fiddly acoustic part on WFMH. It's too hot not to have the window open but there are entirely too many trains. Do it tomorrow.

Wednesday 11th May:
Did it today along with acoustic tracks on Sundial and Give my heart.

Thursday 13th May:
Just enough time to record My First Lead Vocal (well, since Mike) on Scary Mary before "having a meeting" ("going for dinner") with Mat and Fiona. I get to sing it because it's so incredibly high. Decide not to worry too much about 'tuning' over 'character' for it is a characterful song. I mean, it even has a spoken section. How much more character could you ask for?

Meet with Matt and Matt and Mat and Fi and have pizza while discussing "self-mythologisation" and "the essence of coolness" and "a sixties feel with a modern flavour". Mostly it comes down to buying expensive clothes, looking at the camera and shooting in black and white.

Friday 14th May:
After much providing of identification, Matt has managed to hire a Hammond for the day. Nobody wants to believe that a lone man would wish to hire a giant organ (oh, please) and even dropping the mighty name of RUTH doesn't appear to satisfy. Fortunately the Hammond man knows Brian who convinces him of our legitimacy and he agrees to drop it round to Matt and Kim's new flat in the afternoon. I am excited because they only got the keys this morning and I have not yet seen the miraculous studio. Before I can see it, though, I must help move sofas and shelves and strange glass globes full of mysterious lumpen shapes.

The studio is remarkably studio-y considering it was meant to be an office. It's an extension built onto the end of a terrace, so its only neighbours are the rest of the flat. After a lifetime of banged-upon connecting walls, this seems like a dream come true. The little inner room isn't really very soundproofed, but we can deal with this later.

For the moment it is dominated by the Hammond and one of my beloved Leslies (the gorgeous rotating-speaker cabinate that makes the Hammond and everything else you put through it sound super-cool). Hurriedly set everything up and figure out the best way to mic up the Leslie. Start off with WFMH with a super-fuzzy sound. You don't get to use a real Hammond very often and it's a fantastic sound. The track sounds spectacular. Do parts on Give my heart and Scary Mary and then I do octave-y guitar in the bridges of WFMH and replace the dodgy guitar on Hello there with lovely Leslie guitar. Attempt normal guitar part on Give my heart but amp fuses again so do novelty Leslie one instead. Must get more fuses. After I leave MVB comes to do various percussion tracks and Matt claims to have put organ on Sundial.

Monday 17th May:
Indications are that we will be shooting the video on Sunday which means we must mix the track before then. We're going to Switzerland in two weeks and we need to finish all the tracks for the first single, which is now definitely going to be WFMH. Am secretly flattered in the extreme because I wrote it.

Today is for finishing off backing vocals, so we rapidly go through my parts on WFMH. Matt double-tracks the lead vocal in mysterious ill-temper. Discover later that he sang "what" instead of "how" in the "oh how could I ever…" section making for an interesting new word that sounds a bit like "hat". He is not keen to replace it so I guess it'll just have to be One Of Those Things.

Try out an idea I had for bvs on Hello there which is for me and Matt to record two parts together (normal) but in stereo (unusual) and then add further stereo bv parts. It sounds fantastic - kind of wraps around the whole track and fills it up without sticking out too much. Doing harmonies is great cos it's always the last thing and it adds so much colour to the track, and we're very happy with the results. Finally, as the evening draws in I do double-track lead vocal on Scary and then frighten Matt and Kim by doing the high backing vocal which, since the tune is already very high, is very very high and can only be sung at great volume. Apparently this just sounds like terrified screaming from a distance but sounds fine in the track.

Wednesday 19th May:
Start with good intentions to mix Hello there but end up fooling about. Decide to wait till after the single mix which Tony will be starting tomorrow so that we can learn from the Master.

Thursday 20th May:
Today is Mix-our-first-single-in-our-new-studio day which is quite exciting. Tony is going to be mixing really, but for once we will be able to help technically as well as artistically. It soon becomes apparent that we all have much to learn about the automation on our new desk and so things move on a little more slowly than anticipated.

Evening: The Matts go into town to go shopping with Tanya for the video shoot. Tanya (Carl's sister) is styling us for the shoot and has been saying "Prada" a lot and we have been clutching our wallets in fear. I miss the shopping expedition because I am babysitting Tilly-Mae. She's fine, by the way. Tony left alone to mix in peace.

Return a few hours later and the track is sounding a bit more together. The main area of concern is the first verse and how to make it interesting.

Matts return with clothes for Matt but nothing yet for MVB. Matt looks faintly reminiscent of Tony Hadley (or a waiter) in his black outfit. We like it though. Mixing goes on slowly till it gets late. We adjourn.

Friday 21st May:
Another multi-tasking day. MVB comes down via the studio shop to pick up the expensive compressors we're hiring; Tony appears in his own good time; Stephen arrives to hear the track, but mostly we're just going shopping.

Matt decides to do moving-in-type things so me and Matt and Steve head for town in the crazed hope of making ourselves look nice. Stephen claims to have never spent more than £20 on a shirt in his life. It's about time that changed, I think.

After many hours of nipping in and out of the changing rooms as if we were in some mid-evening BBC2 style show where the no-hoper band get made over by the effete twat (except we don't get any reassuring guidance from an effete twat) we emerge laden with bags and hopes for an all-new classy RUTH.

Return to studio to find Tony slumped over the desk but everything sounding nice (apart from the first verse just not working yet). Fool around with EQ ideas until late again. I guess we need another day.

Saturday 22nd May:
Try a new strategy on the first verse; sample the drum track on the computer, EQ it all lo-fi and compress it a lot so it's thin and scratchy and then fade in the real drums for the second half of the verse when everything comes in and it goes thrummy and chunky. All that's left is minor tweaks and it's done, so I leave Matt and Tony to it to get ready for tomorrow's shoot.

Sunday 23rd May:
Have we seen the future? All our previous video shoots have been mystifyingly populous and expensive with lots of lights and little train tracks and giant cameras and giant cameramen and grown-ups looking for dollies. This one was done in a tiny little office at Carl's company with two lights and one little camera, against a big bit of blue paper. Am slightly mortified because we had talked about using some big white studio, and on the strength of this I had made Mat Taylor come out to take some photos for the single cover (thereby killing many little birdies with one mighty photographic stone). The cramped room is not at all suitable for him to shoot in but he seems cheerful enough.

Carl and Paul are busy doing unnameable things downstairs so we unload our playing items… I wonder where the hardware is? The 'hardware' (collective name for all the stands for the drum kit) has recently been living in a big blue bag and usually takes two people to lift. But it's not here. We all grow confused. When was the last time we used it? Was it when we were recording at Robin's? But we all kind of remember it being left in the van… Is it at mine? I don't remember it being there, and it's not something you can easily ignore. Is it a the new flat? Matt's old place? Has it been stolen? And who would steal an extremely heavy bag full of metal tubes? It's all very perplexing.

Stephen and Debbie arrive, and with one week to go Debbie is looking even more impressively pregnant than before. We all discuss the problem of the drums, because drums do not look their best when sitting in a line on the floor, as they currently are. MVB decides to go and borrow a spare kit he can get hold of from Kilburn and I go up the road to Rob's work to see whether there's a big bag of heavy metal tubes lying around there. There isn't, although the guy on reception has a lot of piercings including one in his tongue that seems to rattle against the telephone when he answers it - must be very aggravating for all concerned.

Return to find general apathy. Carl and Paul still busy downstairs and Tanya is turning up Matt's Hadley-slacks while her 'assistant' (whose name eludes me) has gone off to buy an iron because we haven't brought one because we're 'boys'.

Eventually Matt returns with drums, X returns with iron and Carl says that they are ready. Get all dressed up and look pretty good, go downstairs and cavort. The room isn't big enough for a shot of the whole band really, so there are little group shots and individual shots. Matt does great job of shouting at camera in shades and we all look moody except for the ones where we're playing to the track sped up twice as fast when we keep falling over and laughing.

Brian and Geri pop by and are excited looking at their little star-boy-wonders even though it's just us and a blue screen.

After a much shorter time than usual for a shoot, Carl proclaims that it's all finished and we wheel everything back into the van. Apologise profusely to Mat Taylor who hasn't been able to get anything useful and decide to get together with him the following weekend. This will delay the artwork deadline by a week but it can't be helped.

Wish that the work was done but there is a little more to do on the mix before we take it to Abbey Road to master it tomorrow - just a minor adjustment to the bvs and running the whole mix through our hired expensive compressor. I've never done this before and it's a little worrying because you can really overdo it and the track can start 'breathing' and sounding very odd. Manage to get it to sound warm and chunky and tough but still nervous because it will be heard by people who know what they're doing tomorrow.

Monday 24th May:
Drive into town nice and early to get to Abbey Road for 10am. Actually arrive early for the first time in our career and go straight up to the mastering suite. All the engineers at Abbey Road are very kindly and shambling (unlike say Sarm where they're all bastards). We are working with Nick Webb who mastered WITO, and he gradually remembers who we are over the course of the session. Gingerly explain that we'd made the record at home and that we don't really know how to work compressors and put it on. He shocks us all by saying that it sounds fine and doesn't need any EQ or anything, which has never happened before. Flattered but slightly disappointed - mastering is usually when it gets polished to a lovely shine and sounds like the real thing. But it's reassuring to have an industry-standard engineer give it the thumbs-up. Do a version with a fade-out and then get mastered and "normalised" versions of backing track and instrumental.

Return home via studio shop (to drop off hired gear) and Rob's work (to ask if he's seen our hardware - he's not in). We're playing in Guildford at Surrey University tonight but before we can leave for the soundcheck Matt and Kim must remove the last of their belongings from their old flat. Me and MVB avoid having to clean the oven, but we do have to lug their bed around. Horrible rush to get everything done in time, but manage it. People at universities look more like children every year. Must be getting old. Spend gig longing for lie-in in the morning.

Wednesday 26th May:
In a week's time we will be in Switzerland, so there's plenty of time for mixing the B-sides. Start with Hello there today. Always seem to enjoy B-sides more. MVB suffering from nasty-sounding cold. I will have it before week is out.

Thursday 27th May: Finish mix of Hello there. Sounds nice, thankyou very much.

Friday 28th May:
Into the home straight now, just got Scary Mary to finish. First Matt has to do his backing vocal which is still too high for him, even a third below the melody. I have the voice of a girl.

Last night I listened to "Mutations" by Beck, which inspires me to mix the track in a mid-sixties fashion, i.e. with the drums and bass on the right, voice in the middle and everything else on the left. In the early days of stereo and four-track recording this kind of thing was quite normal, but now it's mildly eccentric. Reminds me of "Help", and that's fine. Finish in time to go and watch telly with my loved ones which is what life is all about.

Saturday 29th May:
It's perilously close to Steve and Debbie's due-date, but we force Stephen to come to London today as if to thumb our noses at fate, because sometimes taking photos with your band is more of a priority than being there at the arrival of your first born. And today is one of those days.

Assemble with Mat Taylor in our video gladrags outside Moorgate tube station in the heart of the deserted City and spy out some glassy building to pose in front of. Matt having excessive hay fever problem and there surely will be few shots without him sneezing or blowing his nose in a bubbly fashion. MVB still snotty but over the worse, if you were wondering. Should one put one's hands in one's pockets on these occasions? Or just let one's arms hang loosely at one's sides? It doesn't seem to be an issue at any other time in your life.

Have tea and flapjacks in the Barbican while listening to a Cuban guitar-and-wailing ensemble. Repair to Mat's flat for 'portraits'. Thankfully there is a fresh supply of nose-wiping material for Matt. Soon the films are exhausted and so are we. Being looked at takes it out of you.

Say farewell to Stephen - he isn't a father yet, but probably will be next time we see him. How extraordinary.

Hmmm. Throat feels a little rough…