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.
Alex James: The Great Escape
Published: 11 October 2006
Nine months I've been tapping away in my pantry, tout seul, writing my autobiography. How easy it seems to write songs when you're writing a book. How easy it seems to do anything except write books. And how easy and infinitely wonderful it is to do nothing at all.
Alex James: The Great Escape
Published: 04 October 2006
It had been an eerily good couple of days. It started when I went to London on Wednesday. One minute I was talking about cardoons with the President of the Royal Horticultural Society in Kensington, the next I was in Claridge's ballroom and the director of the Whitechapel gallery was saying: "We really need to put together a limited edition of the artwork that you made for us." I was on the point of replying when there was a loud noise. It was Roxy Music. They were on the stage. That was a surprise. Then it was Thursday. I'd been offered a radio show and a television series by midday, both of which I want to do. I think it's this cheese business. NME.com put my new cheese on the cover. I haven't been on the cover of NME since Britpop went mouldy.
Alex James: The Great Escape
Published: 27 September 2006
I wandered around the garden in bare feet as usual. These days I only put shoes on for London. The September calm is supreme, and the view goes on forever. All the haze of high summer has cleared, the horizon is in sharp focus, and I think you can see Sam Mendes' and Kate Winslet's house. The whole landscape has softened, all the hard edges obscured by seeding grasses and haywire shrubs.
Alex James: How I became a big cheese
Published: 26 September 2006
Alex James: The Great Escape
Published: 20 September 2006
I spent the weekend in Manchester. Manchester's got posher since the last time I stayed there. What's going on? Are you really supposed to eat a burger with a knife and fork? I'll never be able to, it's like trying to eat a lollipop with a spoon, it's just wrong. The waiters were giving me the beady eye as I tucked in, two-handed. I felt that to ask for ketchup would meet with further disapproval.
Alex James: The Great Escape
Published: 13 September 2006
Iwas lured from my bed on Friday by a particularly good piece of Cheddar. Cheese seems to taste best in the middle of the night and I often make the journey to the fridge in darkness. On Friday, though, the whole house was bathed in moonlight. Moonlight is a rural phenomenon. It's too subtle to compete with the background glow of the city. Even sunlight is at a premium in built-up areas, it's not really part of the package. Out here sunshine dazzles through low windows as it rises and sets and spends the rest of the day chasing you around.
Alex James: The Great Escape
Published: 06 September 2006
Living in the country, surrounded by green open space and few obvious diversions, I still seem to spend my days in a state of peaceful distraction. I think therefore I digress, it seems. It all appears so mild and favourable out there. Just the thought of what to have for dinner is quite engrossing. I'm expanding the vegetable zones and starting to think about sowing some grain crops in spring.
Alex James: The Great Escape
Published: 30 August 2006
Imagine that you're standing on the Equator and you draw a straight line going north-south, perpendicular to the Equator. OK? Then you draw another straight line next to it, perpendicular to the Equator again. You have a pair of straight parallel lines, right? No, they meet at the poles. Madness! Don't worry, even Euclid, the father of geometry, couldn't cope with parallel lines meeting. They meet because they are bending through another dimension. If you think that's weird, check out relativity. It's mental.
Alex James: The Great Escape
Published: 23 August 2006
Alex James: The Great Escape
Published: 16 August 2006
"Look at that plumbing, it's wonderful, darling!" It was, too, underneath the sink the steel waste pipe was plumb perpendicular, the hot and cold inlets came out of the wall at exactly the right spots and turned neatly through 90 degrees to connect perfectly with the taps. It was a utilitarian work of art, a marvellous manifold. It gave me confidence.
Alex James: The Great Escape
Published: 02 August 2006
We have three washing machines and they spin night and day. Since the twins and au pair arrived, as a household we no longer conform to a sociological norm and have to shop off piste. Supermarkets sell everything in parcels and quantise their stock around smaller family units. I'm just not having supermarkets any more. They're boring. They prey too much on the subconscious, and by the time you get to the queue you're 90 per cent zombified.
Alex James: The Great Escape
Published: 26 July 2006
It's hard to describe the sheer fabulousness and mythic proportions of our neighbours Annabel and James. We don't see them all the time, they're often elsewhere, but living near to them does add enchanting possibilities and encounters to what is, after all, just a quiet corner of Oxfordshire.
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