Alex James: The Great Escape

Published: 14 June 2006

Two babies came home today after eight weeks in intensive care. It was a close squeak. We'd turned a dozen heads by the time we'd got from the hospital door to the car. We hadn't even got in the stupid car, and everyone's looking at us. "Twins," people said to each other, and pointed and stared.

Alex James: The Great Escape

Published: 07 June 2006

There's another roof off, and a whistling workman around every corner. All week I'd been watching them from the window and by Friday I couldn't resist it any longer and joined in with the decorators. Putting paint on things is very calming. It smells nice. Soon I was whistling too.

Alex James: The Great Escape

Published: 31 May 2006

If all goes well this morning, I'll get "The Entertainer" ticked by Mrs Swann, my piano teacher, meaning I'll have finished Piano Book One. It's taken about 18 months of lessons. Learning how to fly only took a year. Mrs Swann says the biggest challenge has been teaching me to play quietly. As she points out most weeks, piano means "soft". Once you hit 30, life becomes one long and sometimes difficult quest for soft, I suppose.

Alex James: The Great Escape

Published: 24 May 2006

The big house up the road just changed hands for 25 million. In Miami, that would get you something pretty on the water, but it wouldn't be enough to get you beyond the wealthy suburbs. If you wanted to impress other rich people, you'd have to spruce the place up with an art collection or a planetary observatory. In the Cotswolds, 25 buys you a potager, a parterre and an orangerie, a chapel, a hamlet and gardens laid out by Humphrey Repton, the first great English landscape gardener. In Miami you'd be living between Lenny Kravitz and Ricky Martin. Here you'd be looking to me and Jeremy Clarkson to make up the numbers for dinner. I did go there once and it is the most beautiful house I've ever been to for dinner.

Alex James: The Great Escape

Published: 17 May 2006

In between writing an opera and building a picturesque cheese factory all week, I've been looking for a frog. Geronimo is two and he's having a "See frog?!" phase. I've checked the wells regularly and the pond, but nothing's turned up. One was hopping across the road on Saturday night and I stopped the car and went back, but couldn't find it.

Alex James: The Great Escape

Published: 10 May 2006

They shoot rooks don't they?

Alex James: My twin miracles

Published: 06 May 2006

When his partner went into labour three months early, it struck terror into Alex James. Here he describes how, with the help of a crack team of NHS specialists, his babies won their battle to survive - and he was as awed by the wonder of the hospital as the wonder of life