I believe this project started as a dream...

Yeah. I had a dream of two brothers who were in bunk beds, and they were living above a chip shop. You know when you have a dream and sometimes it stays with you during the day? Well, It was like that. It even gave me a sense of place - a small village.

Was that important to you?

I think the sense of place was really important to me. I just wanted it to be evocative, so that people would identify with it. Everyone has feelings about the seaside in a way they don't about other things. As children, we have a very excitable idea of the seaside, so memories are wrapped up in it. It's a place where normal rules don't apply. I think you find that with ports; they're different. There's something loose about them. Maybe the sea is a general metaphor for mortality. It will always be there, it's a constant. Whereas we are temporary. Maybe that does liberate people. People kill themselves in the sea, or they run away to it.

How important was the academic-versus-family life theme?

When you put those two things together, it's a class thing. You have working class family with working class concerns. Then you have a comfortable middle class guy, whose basically making his own problems, because that's where he's going to get them. I liked the ideas of having different mind sets. Ray is very arrogant and feels like the world is made for him. He knows all the rules and can manipulate them. And then these other people who feel they don't know anything.