This Could Be Rock 'N' Roll by Tim Roux Page B

off him.
    Tonight it was a romantic meal à deux at La Perla, a really nice, intimate Italian restaurant a few steps down Newland Avenue. It’s hard to adjust to Jade bouncing all over the place again and looking bushy-tailed enthusiastic. It’s great.
    We had a wild evening just talking and laughing and coming up with stupid names for the baby and generally being pleased to be celebrating together again.
    When we got home it was more energetic romance so there was no chance of laying down the track that had been buzzing around my head since about four o’clock. Sometimes I fear losing tunes I think up and don’t get time to work out immediately, but I haven’t lost one yet. I may lose some details but something else always turns up to replace them. Anyway, thrashing around with Jade tonight was well worth losing a song for. It reminded me of why we got together in the first place. And tomorrow it is watching some new band down The Welly.
     
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    Why did Jade and I get together? It’s a question I answer differently depending on the mood I am in. After last night when we were roaring along in perfect harmony I can only say “Why wouldn’t we?” She is lively, she is beautiful, she is a laugh, she is good natured and she is in love with me. I would have been insane not to have succumbed to her chat up line at that gig. When she is her and I am me, we really do rock together despite her being fifteen years younger than me, and her mum Jackie is a laugh too.
    At other times I think that it is simply because she is so beautiful and sexy. Even now most of the time I just want to rip her clothes off and feel her ripping mine off too. Cathy and I were never like that together. We were more intellectual and sophisticated. Cathy always wanted to talk around the whole operation, to be wooed into it, to play power games so that I realised that I was truly privileged. Jade isn’t remotely like that. Perhaps it is because she is from another generation, one that thinks you should get smashed and fucking well enjoy yourself, no questions asked, no regrets, whether it is a one-night stand, whether it is in the pub car park, or with your best mate’s girl. Everything goes although Jade doesn’t behave that way. I can’t imagine her ever doing the dirty on me. She is totally loyal, but she does feel that we two should go for it as often and wherever we can which can lead to some embarrassing moments - I am a kind of public face after all - as we are seen emerging from the same toilet together. Roger, my boss, caught us once in a pub in Hull one Saturday. It’s a good job I wasn’t working that day. He gave me odd, slightly startled, looks for a few days after that, perhaps wondering whether he should sack me anyway for bringing his company into disrepute, as if that was possible with an estate agency.
    In darker moods, I feel that I just cling onto Jade because I would be lonely otherwise and at least she is willing to be with me, and that sooner or later we will split. She will find somebody more her own age and I will hole myself up in some dingy pad somewhere writing and playing music until I dry out like a prune. Thank God she saves me from that.
    If I am honest, Jade doesn’t feel as permanent as Cathy did. Maybe she will when the baby is born and we are a complete family. We still feel very demarcated as individuals to me, like squatters sharing a house until the raid comes.
    Jade and my musical tastes are radically different except that she does genuinely seem to like my stuff which Cathy never really did. However, Cathy and I did tend to like the same things including some of the people I hang around with. Edwina Hayes is one of Cathy’s favourites. Edwina is a wonderful artist and incredibly supportive of lesser talents such as mine, perhaps because she spends a lot of time in Nashville where there is a real musical community going on. Over here, artists tend to rip each other to pieces. Edwina is really