Bit of a Blur

by Alex James

  My experience of taxi drivers, and in fact more or less everybody, is that people naturally tend to underestimate each other. Very successful people are often refreshing because, being used to success, it’s what they identify with and what they tend to expect and see more of in people.

  I once got in a taxi at Sloane Square. The driver and I were talking and he inevitably asked me what I did all day. I told him I was a musician – I was in a chatty mood. Not as chatty as him, though. He naturally assumed that I was a struggling musician. People usually do. He treated me to a well-prepared ‘Don’t you give up on it, my son’ soliloquy. ‘You’ll get there in the end,’ he said. I wondered where the hell he was talking about. I’d asked him to take me to Claridge’s.

  I went to a drum shop, once, with Ben Hillier. He was the hot record producer of the moment. He was in between finishing Think Tank for Blur and starting a record with Depeche Mode. Ben has a thorough academic grounding in rhythmic principles and occult knowledge of metric pulse systems. He’d played timpani in orchestras when he was twelve; he’d engineered drum sounds on U2 albums; he’d programmed beats for Paul Oakenfold; he’d found the man with the cannons that we used on ‘Jerusalem’. I’ve never met anyone who knew more about drums than Ben. If ever there was a bona fide drum expert, it was him, and he’d just walked into the drum shop. He was looking at a vintage Gretsch kit. It was a beauty, very expensive. He was asking questions about it that I didn’t understand. The man said, ‘It’s a bit unnecessary for a home studio, if that’s what you’re looking for.’ He was quite dismissive. It wasn’t what Ben was looking for. He was looking for something that could grace Abbey Road. He was definitely being underestimated.

  We were arriving at Buckingham Palace, now.

  ‘Where do you want, mate?’

  ‘I think we need to go in where those policemen are standing, by the photographers, see?’

  ‘In?! Yaw goin’ in? Idunbelieveit! Twenny-farve years I been waitin’! Twenny-farve years!’

  ‘Jesus, I didn’t think you were very impressed. How long do you think I’ve been waiting to say it?’ He wanted to know everything then, but there wasn’t time.

  I noticed Beth Orton going in, giggling, and I relaxed a little bit. It was a reception for the music industry, but I hadn’t known exactly what to expect.

  It was the best party I’ve ever been to. I’ve tried to work out why. There was no sex or drugs or rock and roll. It was purely about music, in all its shapes and forms. I was talking to a tin-whistle player for a while. Then I spotted my manager. He was hosting a little huddle that included Status Quo, Peter Gabriel and Phil Collins. He was doing his Basil Brush laugh and telling stories. I had no idea that he knew all these people. I went to say hello, but got talking to a lady from the Nordoff-Robbins Music Therapy Foundation. She introduced me to an academic from the Guildhall School of Music. Like myself, most people had arrived without their wives, partners or friends. There were no plus ones, which meant that everyone had to talk to each other, rather than huddling around in their customary cliques. Everybody who turned up was quite excited about being at the palace, apart from Brian May, who was leaning unceremoniously against a fireplace, with his mad Louis Quatorze hair and aristocratic features, giving the impression that he was often there.

  I caught up with my manager and he said, ‘Come on, you’ve got to meet the Queen.’ ‘Where is she?’ I spotted her; she was with Beth Orton and they were both giggling. The Queen seemed to be really enjoying herself, and why not? It was a great party. Mastering the two-minute encounter is part and parcel of being in a famous band. Music has a supernatural effect on people; I know, because I feel it myself. Meeting the people we have stirred is a delicate business. It’s not big-headed to suggest that sometimes members of the band spent the merest of moments with people who would really cherish the encounter and take the memory to the grave. The Queen, who does that kind of thing more than anybody, is really, really good at it, the uncontested world champion of the brief encounter. She made her way around the whole room and made everyone feel special. It’s tiring being anti-royal. I’ve felt much better about everything since I had a chat with the boss.

  I think all rock stars start by wanting to destroy the world. Then their dreams come true and they end up trying to keep it like it was before they started.

  It’s Twins!

  It was Boxing Day 2005. We’d had dinner with the Duke and Duchess of Somerset. We kind of gatecrashed. We’d just confirmed that Claire was pregnant, days pregnant. It was really icy on the roads and really late. I’d done most rock star things, but I’d never driven a car into a tree until that night. We were almost home. I put the brakes on to slow down for the hairpin bend at the top of our valley. Nothing happened. We just kept going. We were heading for a Cotswold stone wall at deadly speed. I mounted the verge to lose some pace but lost control and we glanced off a mature oak, Quercus robur. It was a hell of a wallop. Six inches further to the left and we’d have hit it smack on. Claire might have lost her legs. As it was, she lost the baby a few days afterwards and I just don’t know how closely linked the two events were.

  We were on holiday in the Maldives six months later and Claire just couldn’t get out of bed. She wanted taramasalata for breakfast, but it wasn’t that kind of hotel. I think men can tell when their wives are pregnant. I always knew before we did the test. It’s the rising shape of the breast that gives it away, more than the à la carte thing. I said we weren’t having ice cream this time. No way. It’s hard to watch your wife eat ice cream, especially when you’re really happy. I put on four stone when Geronimo was born, slightly more than Claire did. I’d worn out a pair of running shoes getting that stuff off. We both thought it might be twins. Claire was just so tired and hungry. We told the doctor and the doctor said, ‘Don’t be ridiculous, you don’t want twins. It’s complicated.’ And sent us for a scan.

  As soon as the ultrasound image came up on the computer screen, it was blindingly obvious what was happening. For the untrained eye, it’s hard to tell exactly what’s what on an early scan. It’s all a bit abstract. I was definitely looking at a diptych, though, two of everything. Yep, there were two tadpoles, two doughnuts, two wiggly bits, two croissant things; twoness abounded and multiplied and filled the screen. It was doubled up. It was dual-aspect. It was a completely two-nique situation. The mirror symmetry spoke a primitive language that a monkey would have understood. I looked up at the consultant and raised my eyebrows. He just nodded.

  ‘Yep,’ he said. ‘Not much doubt about that.’

  Claire had her head in her hands and her mouth was open; she was speechless. I realised that was what I was doing too, holding my head and gaping. I don’t know if it’s a learnt or primal reflex that causes that reaction - hands on ears, eyes and mouth wide - but it seems to be the universal mechanism for expressing sudden, unexpected, uncontainable elation. We told the grannies on Christmas Day. I thought about it and decided that the exact point when Christmas peaks is halfway through lunch, after the goose and before the cheese. So that was when we told them. I filmed their reaction and they both do that exact same thing. They put their hands on their heads, curl forwards and open their mouths. It’s a super-smile, reserved for just a handful of occasions in a lifetime when it is suddenly clear out of the blue that something wonderful has happened and things are going to get immeasurably better from now on.

  I was sidelined by the news. We were at the neighbours’ house on Boxing Day and I was talking to an eminent elderly lady. Old ladies are a vital part of life in the country. The Cotswolds does a very good line in golden grannies. They seem to know more about gardening and pianos and local history and who’s who and what’s what than anybody. I was telling her my plans to bulldoze all the building rubble into one large heap in the distance, making a satisfying megapile. I explained how I was going to put a shed on the top and apply for planning permission to be buried underneath it with my guitars. At the mention of guitars, she said, �
�Oh, are you the one who . . .’ I thought she was going to say, ‘is in that band?’ I prepared myself to be bashful, but she said, ‘. . . whose wife is having twins?’ And that was me all of a sudden, Claire’s husband, the twins’ dad. I had a new identity. Bands and families aren’t that dissimilar. I had a new band now, or rather Claire did.

  Claire got really big. We had fat rapper tracksuits on standby. I thought they were the only things that would fit. One of her friends told her that she wasn’t going to be able to pull her own pants up when it got to the end. Another one said she’d need a wheelchair, for sure. I’m not sure how badly Claire needed to hear those kinds of things, or how badly the people who said them wished it was them having twins instead.

  It didn’t get that far, though. I was in London when Claire phoned and said she thought her waters had broken. It was three months early. She was rushed to the regional maternity unit and told to lie very still. They said it would be great if she could just stay as still as she could for about the next three months or so. She’d been there for a week when I got the call, the call I had been getting every day, ‘Get down here, I think they’re coming’, followed by a mad dash and panic and then, nothing doing.

  It was the morning of Easter Monday, about two-thirty, when the phone rang. This time it wasn’t Claire who called. It was a midwife. She said, ‘I think it’s worth your while coming down.’

  It was a familiar run, by now, but it was an eerie sprint to the hospital that time. The roads were immaculate. It was dream-like. I didn’t see another person or vehicle as I gunned the big old Merc through the ghostly empty night the twenty-odd miles to Oxford.

  Hospitals are buzzing the whole twenty-four hours, especially maternity wards. There were always a couple of people smoking outside the entrance to the women’s centre and there were people around the drinks machine, waiting and wondering.

  Claire was crying when I got to the ward. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. It wasn’t her fault. I held her hand. We’d been briefed on what to expect if she gave birth this early when she was first admitted. It wasn’t exactly what you want to hear. Serious risk of brain damage, almost certain to be breathing difficulties, possibility of blindness, and that was just the ‘B’s.

  The babies were definitely on their way and they were both breech and they were weak, especially the one whose waters had broken. The safest option, said the consultant, was an immediate emergency Caesarean. I didn’t have any better ideas.

  The operating theatre was as white as an art gallery and as bright and busy as a TV studio. There was the surgeon and her assistant, the anaesthetist, a nurse for each baby, a specialist for each baby and doctors and people with clipboards. All you could see was eyes. Everyone had masks on.

  I was sitting by Claire’s head behind a curtain that ran along the top of her chest. I’d been talking to my friend Robert about Caesareans. His wife had one. He said it was absolutely fine as long as you don’t look over the curtain. The only trouble is that all you want to do is look over the curtain.

  It was true. I was leaning over. Claire wanted to know what was going on. I didn’t want to tell her. They’d painted her tummy with gloop, sliced it open and the surgeon was in there up to her elbow, rummaging.

  When she pulled twin one out by his feet, like a rabbit coming out of a hat, he didn’t make a sound. I was sure he hadn’t made it. He was limp and silent. Claire was saying, ‘Is it OK? Is it OK?’ I said of course it was. It was a lie as far as I was concerned, but a good one. They were still fishing around for twin two. He was squeaking a bit when he got out, so that was all right.

  I felt so confused. Claire was in a daze. The babies were whisked straight from the theatre into intensive care, where all the life-support apparatus was situated. No one can tell you what’s happening at this stage, no one can say, ‘It’s fine, don’t worry’, because no one knows. It’s best just to let them deal with it. It was my job to look after Claire. I couldn’t do anything else.

  We got back to the ward and I asked the nurse as discreetly as I could when we’d know if there were any problems. I was really worried about the one who hadn’t made any noise or movements. She said brightly, ‘No news is good news, so try and get some rest.’ I called Mrs Swann, the piano teacher, to say we couldn’t make it today, because the babies had arrived. She said, ‘Congratulations!’, and I hadn’t realised until she said that magic word what had actually just happened. It was all so touch and go, I hadn’t even called the grandparents.

  As the days in intensive care went by, I wondered when I’d be able to stop worrying. Blind panic had mellowed to acute anxiety, which in turn had settled right down into chronic mild apprehension with occasional spasms of intense anguish, all mixed with the chest-beating rapture of fatherhood. It was weird, like moose cheese: too much flavour to deal with.

  The special care birth unit was as hot as hell, and the torment was as exquisite. This is where the sick babies from all points west were brought to fight for their tiny lives. It was always hard to walk through that door. Sometimes we’d visit and there’d be a new arrival, parents sobbing in the wake of some terrible complication. It was most heart-rending when the parents were young. We never knew if it was going to be us next up for some bad news.

  But the little boys, who to start with would fit in the palm of my hand, fingers like matchsticks and faces like tiny old men, grew stronger. It’s the first twenty-four hours that are the toughest. Then if they can make the first week they’re in with a good chance. But it’s always day-by-day, hour-by-hour, minute-by-minute, in neonatal intensive care. After eight weeks in Oxford and a fortnight in Banbury, we brought them home. It was a close squeak. Twenty years ago they wouldn’t have made it.

  Toys are better now, as well. They don’t know they’re born, kids today.

  Today and Tomorrow

  It’s half my life ago, nineteen years, since the first rehearsal when we wrote ‘She’s So High’ and it’s nearly four years since Think Tank. It was a mad steeplechase on a mad horse, but writing about it all at last has made me realise just how much I loved every single minute of it, while it was happening. No one can be wise until they have been properly foolish, or feel well at home until they’ve spent time wandering in the wilderness. Having spent so much time together, all four of us in the band have grown up in our own quite different ways since that last record, we’ve all learned to stand on our own two feet as individuals. Damon’s sold millions more records, Graham has found peace and filled it with his own noise, Dave’s gone into politics and I’m a Renaissance man. I think we all needed to do that before we could face each other again.

  On my last birthday, Graham came out to the farm. I hadn’t seen him for a couple of years, but we were both wearing tweedy suits and thinking about the same new things. He wants to move out to the country, too. He brought his new guitar with him, a customised Martin acoustic, built especially for him. He played it while I cooked lunch. It was just like at college only it was a better lunch, and a nicer guitar. ‘I’m up for having a jam with the others,’ he said, rather surprisingly.

  I was just happy to see him again. It’s companionship that makes any journey worthwhile. I’d taken a running jump at everything and somehow, instead of falling, I’d risen, weightlessly and effortlessly, lifted higher and higher by the arms of the people who surrounded me.

  Flying Tony brought the Bonanza over today. I’d sold it to Dave for a generous price and he still lets me use it occasionally. I drove cross-country to Enstone aerodrome with Claire and Geronimo. The flying club usually only does Pot Noodles and crisps but there was a barbecue going on this morning and burger smoke wafted amid the avgas fumes. There were planes coming in from all directions and the usual murmur of covert excitement that is the happy atmosphere of all small airfields.

  ‘Where do you want to go?’ said Tony.

  ‘Shall we just go and look around?’

  The earth fell away once more. My wife, my child, my friend and I were a
irborne, a racing bullet at the exact centre of a perfect three hundred and sixty degree horizon, the whole world below us, and God knows, the boundless open universe above. It was a late September day. The haze of high summer had dissolved and the air beneath our wings was a sea of perfect clarity, England in its green glory, below.

  England is beyond all doubt the prettiest country from the air. It is more intricately fascinating than the yawning stitched quilts of continental Europe, more vivid than any other landscape. Those small meadows are impractical for farming but unrivalled in their brilliant perfection. And right in the middle of the prettiest part of England’s green and pleasant land was the farm. I hadn’t seen it from the air since I’d bulldozed the concrete or planted the vegetable garden, dug the lake or knocked down the asbestos carbuncles. It was a miraculously transformed ruin; it was a phoenix from the flames; it was a very big house . . .