Alex James: The Great Escape
Published: 04 April 2007
The moon was up, enchanting and casting shadows. It drew me out of the garden and into the fields. Not much was stirring apart from the pigs saying hello, the odd lamb bleating and one or two startled pigeons. The last train from Paddington rumbled by in the distance. It was one of those occasional pauses when everything falls away and you get the big picture all of a sudden.
Alex James: The Great Escape
Published: 28 March 2007
I think marketing is one of the three greatest inventions in history. (The other two are the camera and the bicycle.) Marketing is brilliant because, instead of telling us what we can have, it asks us what we want.
Alex James: Blessed are the cheese makers
Published: 24 March 2007
Why does someone with a successful life in the city want to give it up to make cheese? Actually, I should think there's a time in lots of people's lives when they think, right, that's it, I'm going to give it all up and move to the country and make cheese. It's just that most people never actually do it.
Alex James: The Great Escape
Published: 21 March 2007
The entire Cotswolds area of outstanding natural beauty was still reeling from the Hurley wedding, the first days of spring and the arrival of the red admiral butterfly when the Cheltenham festival detonated. The racing is reckoned to bring £50m into the local economy over the week.
Alex James: The Great Escape
Published: 14 March 2007
We've got 15 guests coming over for lunch today. I think that's the most I've ever catered for. I've finally finished my book: well, very nearly, and we're entertaining the buyers for all the big bookshop chains. My publisher offered to pay for a chef, but I wanted to cook myself. I've challenged Gordon Ramsay to a shepherd's pie competition, and I thought I could use the practice. The publishers said, "We'll pay for everything, then."
Alex James: The Great Escape
Published: 28 February 2007
On Sunday, I had risen at six and done three rounds with Bonnie Greer in London, reviewing the newspapers on Radio 4, before breakfast. I liked her immensely, but managed to wind her up by suggesting that outer space is a boy thing. She was quite worried about Britney. We all are. Then I went to Manchester to record The Tube and interviewed a space weather expert and a folk singer whose songs seemed to speak of things like moist mushrooms and foxes' milk. It has never occurred to me to write songs about such things.
Alex James: The Great Escape
Published: 21 February 2007
How utterly appalling it is to be unwell. I spent the entire weekend in "hot turkey", tossing and turning under sopping sheets, drifting in and out of Star Wars battle sequences and Sherlock Holmes repeats in gruelling trials of irrational fear and hopelessness. The dog licking my salty face and the cats, eager to take advantage of the extra warmth, drove me to distraction.
The Big Chill: Alex James braves the coldest therapy on earth
Published: 19 February 2007
Alex James: The Great Escape
Published: 14 February 2007
I spent the morning considering dark matter and the afternoon considering the dairy cow. Cows weigh more than half a ton and there is something very pleasing about their extra-largeness. All the equipment that comes with cows is satisfyingly chunky and mechanical, too: tractors and fork-lifts. It makes my sheep and pig paraphernalia look flimsy. There is an extra element of drama in dairy farming, as the cows must be milked twice daily. Sheep just gambol and graze. I feel the pigs would like me to play more football with them, but they're happy rooting, munching and chasing each other all day.
Alex James: The Great Escape
Published: 07 February 2007
I'd forgotten that moving to the country was such a gamble. When we left London three years ago, I really thought my life might be over. My band was disintegrating. I'd just stopped drinking and shagging so I could get married, and that shed a layer of boozy mates and girlfriends. My handful of close friends and favourite girlfriends could cope with my sobriety, but most of them never forgave me for getting married.
Alex James: The Great Escape
Published: 31 January 2007
I'm one of the proud presenters of The Tube, Channel 4 Radio's madhouse monthly magazine programme, and I've persuaded the producers to let me interview a highbrow academic genius every month. We had a maths mastermind this time, Dr Richard Elwes from Leeds University. I was hoping to have a word with him about "metric tensors", which I must admit was a bit of insider dealing, because it's something I've been struggling with myself, at home. Metric tensors are the mathematical tools used to describe the geometry of spacetime and are key to understanding Einstein's universe.
Alex James: The Great Escape
Published: 24 January 2007
Poor old Fred looks knackered. There's a lot for a sheep farmer to contend with at the moment. We lost a couple of roof panels on the big sheep barn during Hurricane Edith. (Hurricanes are named after dogs in Oxfordshire; Edith is the whippet up the road.) The fields are gurgling like wet sponges; the yard is a mud bath. It was snowing just now, the sideways kind, and then the sky cracked open wide, and, for the moment, the sun is broadcasting imperial calm from a perfect silver-blue sky.
Alex James: The Great Escape
Published: 17 January 2007
Alex James: The Great Escape
Published: 10 January 2007
The cheese world has surprised me. It's an elegant soirée, a heavenly place, a garden of Edam. I spent Christmas wallowing in prototypes and perfect pickles that aren't commercially available. I met Jeremy Bowen, the cheesemonger royal, at one party. "Where is this cheese, then?" was the first thing he asked. I told him I had some really lovely lamb, but it wasn't what he wanted to hear.
Alex James: The Great Escape
Published: 03 January 2007
When Mona, our German au pair, arrived in the summer, I asked her if there was anything she'd like to do while she was here. She wanted to see Robbie Williams in concert and eat at Jamie Oliver's restaurant, but most of allshe wanted to see Shakespeare performed in his own country.
Alex James: Chop! Chop! Confessions of a reformed vegetarian
Published: 27 December 2006
Alex James: The Great Escape
Published: 20 December 2006
People who live in Rollright, about five miles away, claim it's the source of Tolkien's Shire. No doubt there are people in New Zealand who claim to live in Middle Earth too, but this morning was enchanting. The sun lay low behind the stripped trees, a flat bank of stratus overhead like an upside-down snowdrift, the light punching off the frozen ceiling and sending the walls odd colours. The immaculate mirrors of puddles lending infinite calm, the green stuff yawning off in all directions into eternal mists.
Alex James: The Great Escape
Published: 13 December 2006
"We need to go and dig some holes in the moon," the speaker was saying as I arrived. I had a wonderful feeling I'd come to the right place. It was going to be a day of very clever people making similarly outlandish suggestions. I felt my brain drop everything it was carrying, and I sat down with great relish.
AlexJames: The Great Escape
Published: 06 December 2006
It's been a while since I felt the whirlwind of the fashion world. Yesterday we were hit by a raging style storm from Italy. At the crack of dawn a lorry and a fleet of Mercedes arrived and disgorged a troupe of high fashionistas. I counted at least 13 of them, all very glamorous, all wearing jeans and trainers, apart from the photographer who was wearing an impossible kind of Wellington slipper that I instantly hankered after.
Alex James: The Great Escape
Published: 29 November 2006
I turned 38 last week. I had no urge to go crazy or see everybody. I wanted only peace and calm.
Alex James: The Great Escape
Published: 22 November 2006
A journalist asked me last week how many sheep I had and I realised I had absolutely no idea. I like to keep abreast of the price of bread - I'm always ready for that one - but I was caught out fair and square in the ovine reality region. There's always so much going on here, and people asking questions about everything, that I have a special arrangement with Fred, the sheep farmer, where we just wave at each other and smile. He never asks me any questions, and I never ask him any. He just beeps, waves and grins. It suits us both very well and I must say I enjoy sheep farming tremendously.
Alex James: The Great Escape
Published: 08 November 2006
It's taken a couple of years for us to get to know each other, but now I'm most at ease in the pastoral situation. It's a big palace of art, the countryside - exhilarating. We drove back from Birmingham airport on Saturday morning through hobbity hills and dragony dales in streaming golden sunshine that made telegraph poles look glamorous and concrete look like magic stuff.
Alex James: The Great Escape
Published: 01 November 2006
'What? How much? What! How much!? Of course we'll do it." "Ohmygod! Claire! Quick! It's Hello!, they're coming. At last! Cancel breakfast and call the cleaners, quick!"
Alex James: The Great Escape
Published: 25 October 2006
I'm 38 next month so I got rid of all my trainers at the weekend. The time had come. I must have had a hundred pairs. I don't think I bought any of them - they're one of the things that come your way when you're in a band. Other things that come free with a recording contract include mobile phones, jeans, records, and inappropriate eye contact. You have to spend a lot on lawyers though, more than you could reasonably spend on phones and jeans.
Alex James: The Great Escape
Published: 18 October 2006
We are fortunate to live in the same village as the country's leading authority on cheese. We'd already started making cheese before I realised she lived here. It's a coincidence and a really good one. Almost as good as Blur's guitarist being the first person I clapped eyes on when I moved to London.
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