Part-time rock musician David Aird is living with side effects of a brain tumour and has now released an album inspired by his diagnosis.

The 55-year-old builder from Willesden Green, who performs under the alias ‘Six Strings and a Pulse’, titled his rock and blues album Still Got A Sense Of Tumour to help raise awareness of the disease.

“The music broke out of me and I felt compelled to record it,” he says.

“Sometimes the pain in my head was debilitating and stopped me being doing simple tasks.

“I can get muddled in my thoughts and must really concentrate to get the job done.”

Mr Aird was diagnosed with a meningioma after three years of headaches and nausea.

He is using the album to document how he felt after his diagnosis in 2017 and everything that followed, including relationship break-ups and leaving the past behind.

“The song that probably most inspired me is When I Meet My Death,” he tells you. “But I don’t write songs only about the tumour — I write about ‘living’ with it, like a passenger that comes on every journey.”

David, who started playing the guitar when he was 16 and spent eight years in America with the band Zebra Crossing, now works as a builder during the day.

But he has episodes of confusion because of the golf ball-sized mass on his brain.

David’s story is not unusual, with 16,000 people each year in the UK diagnosed.

Yet only one per cent of the national spend on cancer research is allocated to brain tumours, the charirty points out.

He is donating half the proceeds of the limited-edition album, out on July 3 from Rough Trade Records West and East (London), to the Brain Tumour Research charity to help find a cure for brain tumours.

“I’ve lost friends to the disease,” David adds. “Hopefully this album will inspire others to  raise money for Brain Tumour Research,”

Charlie Allsebrook, from Brain Tumour Research, said: “We’re determined to change this. It’s only with the support of people like David Aird that will help us find a cure.”

It campaigns to get more investment for brain tumour research to speed up new treatments and ultimately find a cure. It is calling for a national annual spend of £35 million to improve survival rates line with other cancers.