"I'm completely made up of small emotions," she says. "My songs are all little micro moments, when something small has a big impact on me."

There are homilies to the quiet resilience of ordinary, enduring love (Hurricanes) and a bittersweet ballad about the unconditional love parents bear for children who will one day grow up and leave (Have to Stay).

She recognises a thematic thread, "a mixture of nostalgia and regret at choices you have made, and questioning whether they were the right ones". Dido pauses to consider where these songs have sprung from.

"I'm hurtling into my late 40s. I think when you come out of that initial haze of having super-small kids, you get these really intense waves of feeling that you're not used to having any more.

"Maybe songs are always a way of looking back. And the older you get the more you have to look back on and the more wisdom you get to look back with."

The album has been co-written and produced with her older brother, Rollo Armstrong, the founder of club band Faithless and a collaborator since her breakthrough.

"We just wanted to hang out. I enjoy his company. And in between walking the dogs and talking about the world, an album sort of happened."