From Sheffield to Tokyo via New York and rural France, the DJ recalls his adventures with friends and family – and the music that accompanied them

We didn’t travel as kids, partly because my dad hated flying and also because it was festival season and his job meant our summer holidays were spent being dragged off to muddy fields. It sounds like I’m complaining. I am a bit. This was long before it was commonplace to see kids at festival: we got cold, and drunk people pointed at us. On the odd occasion we went on “holiday”, we were squashed into a car and driven around Europe with seemingly no real destination. We once drove all the way to Germany to see where our lawnmower was made. The only joy in these journeys were the mixtapes my dad would spend weeks painstakingly preparing for the journey. A few records for the kids and lots for him. Lonnie Donegan was one of the few tracks on there we all loved. Many years later we got to see him play the Glastonbury festival. I stood in awe. He did a weird amount of encores, double figures.