It was a shambles. Trucks loaded with U2’s equipment were peeling off in different directions: left, right and centre like the Wacky Races.

Hapless colleagues were led through the centre of St. Petersburg; others were seen heading the wrong way round the ring road. Oh, what a rigmarole. It became increasingly clear that our armed escorts had little idea how to reach Moscow.

The scrumptious irony is that it’s a straight road – bumble down the M10 and you’ve cracked it.

THE RUSSIAN ARMY

In the nineties we had serious escorts: the Russian army. Our chaperones carried big boys’ toys back then. I have a photo from ’98 of a soldier in my truck – he’s proudly brandishing a Kalashnikov. Back then, there was certainly a real risk of loads and vehicles being pinched, and drivers left in a bad way.

Anyway, back to 2010 and the U2 360 Tour.

Nowadays, we are sometimes assigned “proper” security – guys with uniforms, radio mics, knives and rifles. Other times we get ordinary blokes with cars. Must be the recession. And when I say “ordinary blokes”, I mean feckless fools following satnavs. One at least hopes there might be a bazooka in the boot? Yeehah – shoot-outs and road-blocks. “Ten four, rubber dick.”

Remember that Namibian, Dan and I were last seen following a silver van? That’s right – you were yearning for Namibian to be lightly fried and gulped down with chilli sauce by the baddies. Sorry to disappoint you. That piece of A4 was for real; one of the good guys was driving the van.

But he wasn’t hoofing it enough for my liking. And he was engrossed in checking his satnav on the St. Petersburg ring road. Right, well we hadn’t got all day. ‘Jesus Barny, you’re not supposed to overtake the escort,’ cried Namibian over the CB. I could hear his larynx on the point of collapse.

USING A MOBILE PHONE WHILST DRIVING

My phone buzzed. ‘Useless. Our escort went wrong three times,’ read the text message. Of course, cognisant of handheld mobile phone laws, I’d stopped to read the text message. But would it really have mattered if I’d kept thundering pell-mell down the M10? Is probity relative?

I mean, when other motorists are undertaking, driving without lights, drinking heavily and ramming fruit salesmen to death with Volvos, one’s slant on legality is altered.  Try and embrace that philosophy because…in for a penny, in for a pound. Michelin Mat was now on the phone.

‘Oh whatho Barnaby,’ he cooed, obviously wanting something. ‘I say, we seem to have lost our escort. Would you mind swinging past our parking area and picking us up?’ Well, I was about to tell him that one has one’s code and oughtn’t he to be less careless in future, when I realised that my little convoy had a leader only by dint of luck.

Well, when I say “leader”, I mean collie. The official escort car was busy rounding up errant Namibians engrossed in biscuit tins rather than concentrating on keeping the hammer down. Technically, I was playing shepherd in our group. But no need to split hairs. ‘Rightho Matthew, be with you in a tick,’ I replied.

U2 TRUCKS FINALLY REACH MOSCOW

There they were: six forlorn truckers pacing in a dusty roadside yard. Pleasantries swiftly completed – and a quick glance at the communal map – we headed back out onto the pocked surface of the M10. Gentleman Steve, a veteran of mischief, soon peeled off down a shortcut, leaving me at the head of an eight-truck convoy.

The mobile phone trilled again. Blast, this was costing me a fortune.

‘Paul, old chap,’ I gushed, wondering who the dickens was on the receiver. Meanwhile, a welter of hazards loomed in front of the windscreen. ‘I’ve got your Coffeemate, crosswords and polos,’ he said, oblivious to the mayhem at my end. ‘Anything else you’d like while I’m at the airport?’ The penny dropped. ‘Ah, Fat Paul,’ I said emphatically. He was flying out to Moscow to double drive me on the next tour leg to Vienna.

Fat Paul is now stored under “F” in my phone. More about him another time. But I’ll just tell you that he’s the only man I know who gets an itch in the middle of his leg. No, not in an area between ankle and tallywacker; I mean actually deep down in his veins. How weird is that? I’ve caught him thumping his thigh a number of times..

WHY DO WE HAVE RUSSIAN ARMED ESCORTS?

Rock and roll trucks are always assigned security cars in Russia. But why? Will we otherwise be overrun with marauding bandits?

It’s difficult to say, because every time I’ve driven to Russia I’ve had an armed escort. On each occasion I noticed no impoverished brigands lurking in the bushes. Never have I clocked pistol-toting rogues hiding in wooded expanses, eager to ambush me, duff me up and pinch my lorry.

Moscow Mafia? Tip-offs that valuable Western trucks are crossing the border? Sensationalist rumours of a nefarious underworld? I don’t know. But the protection racket is thriving.

Little Dick doesn’t worry about hammering his truck through Russia: ‘On a Motorhead tour once,’ he said, the show was cancelled when we arrived in Moscow. ‘Nobody thought to organise us an escort back to the Latvian border, so we just set off  – two trucks, no security.’ Brave man, Little Dick. Fortunately, he emerged unscathed.

But on the Metallica Tour last year, I got chatting to our armed security guys as they posed with guns for a photograph. They admitted to having taken potshots at baddies on occasions. Yep, protection sounds like the way forward, then; I’ve never been a huge fan of bullets in my direction.

The trouble on the U2 Tour, though, was the sheer size of the logistical operation. With a whopping 54 production trucks slipping through the Russian border, co-ordinating who was following whom became a little clouded.

SAFE FROM RUSSIAN HIJACKERS

‘Erm, shouldn’t we have an escort?’ asked Namibian over the CB. We seemed, all of a sudden, to be bereft of any security whatsoever. There was supposed to be eleven cars, each car escorting no more (or fewer) than five trucks. Fine, in theory. But black rock and roll trucks filled the very horizon. And then one of the security guys erred at the turn-off to Murmansk.

Honestly, I’ve never seen such nonsense in all my puff. I waved frantically at colleagues travelling in the opposite direction. Fifty-odd trucks were turning round, having blindly assumed that we were regrouping into the requisite number of trucks per car. Nope. One of the escorts was simply lost. Awfully bad form not to know where you’re going in a job like escorting trucks through iffy territory, no?..

So there we were – Namibian, me and a pal called Dan – barrelling along, heading southeast without a security car. Just the three of us, happily bumbling through a bleak land littered with unremitting hazards. And then we sat in a traffic jam caused by a sleepy trucker mounting the central reservation.

To my surprise, impatient motorists began unscrewing the bolts in the barrier separating the carriageways. A couple of minutes later several cars had turned around rather than wait. The queue shortened considerably.

RUSSIAN MAFIA..

As we began to roll again, a silver van passed us. An A4 piece of paper was Sellotaped to the back window: “U2 TOUR”, it read. ‘That’s more like it,’ said Namibian. ‘I feel safe again now we’ve got an escort.’ A piece of A4, Namibian? Don’t you think a bandit could whizz down to a stationery shop?

‘The baddies know we’re on this stretch of road,’ I said. ‘So how difficult would it be to whack a sign in the back of a van and lead us to a compound? Within the hour you’ll probably have been disembowelled.’ I broke off momentarily, swerving to avoid an erratically driven Lada.

‘Or the baddies might decide to eat you,’ I continued. ‘Actually, given your size, the latter is quite likely. Nature didn’t skimp; you’d make an excellent stew.’ There was a pause. ‘Oh yeah, never thought of that,’ he replied.

Still, innocent until proved guilty and all that. We followed the silver van, retaining the option of ramming him if he tried any fruity monkey business. Then we reached St. Petersburg..

U2 TOUR TRUCKS ENTER RUSSIA

After the terrorist bombing of Moscow airport on 24^th January, Russia has been catapulted to the fore of our minds. Right now, The Foreign Office advises us to avoid specific regions of Russia for all but essential travel. But take extremists out of the equation; are we left with a safe land in which we can freely roam?

Well, every year there are rock concerts in both St. Petersburg and Moscow. How does the stage equipment arrive? We truck it overland from Western Europe. And we’re assigned armed escorts to accompany the convoy.

Dangerous? Yep..but not in the way you’d think.

Last year a cavalcade of trucks on the U2 Tour headed southeast from Finland. We were destined for Russia’s capital, and I was driving somewhere in the middle. Namibian, naturally, was practically glued to my back doors. You know how he panics.

THE RUSSIAN FRONTIER

Predictably, Finnish formalities were completed in minutes; all those saunas do wonders for efficacy. (Did you know there are well over two million saunas in Finland, yet a population of only five million?) On the Russian Federation’s side, however, it was a different kettle of fish. Bureaucracy there is as bewildering as the Enigma Code; they get so het up about collating innumerable white forms. If only they’d relax..

We spent twelve hours on the Russian side. Frosty-faced harridans typed on antiquated keyboards; eastern European truckers grunted. The former eschewed smiles as dangerously progressive. The latter proudly sported socks with sandals.

TRUCKING IN RUSSIA

There are few rules. Or rather, the rules are broken. Between St. Petersburg and Moscow I saw five dead bodies. Seriously. And they weren’t the result of a massive pile-up; I saw five discrete incidents. Sadly, the zero tolerance law on drink-driving holds little currency in Russia; inebriated motorists are rife.

One minute I was delighting in the weather-boarded dachas spooling past, the next minute – disaster. A car had spun and mounted a salesman’s roadside stand. The innocent vendor – probably a father, maybe even a grandfather – was beneath the car, presumed dead. His plastic pots of fruit were scattered, vivid splats of reds and blues amongst the birch trees.

A little further on, I saw a car jacked up precariously on off-cuts of wood, a guy lying beneath the vehicle. Our trucks were passing – at 90 km/h – just inches from his body. And this is with cars weaving in and out, their drivers engaged in a sinister version of The Cannonball Run.

‘I wouldn’t mind but I was actually on the hard shoulder when I see him,’ said my friend Darren over the CB. A car with battered wings shot past seconds later, wildly undertaking. Seconds earlier and…OK, this was getting nasty. The CB radio went quiet. The zany driving had been kind of fun to begin with, but now we’d seen actual bodies. And they don’t bother covering them up in Russia..

Ever wondered how I got into rock and roll? Check out my latest article, published today.

Did you know this? There isn’t a single proper shop inside Madrid’s airport. Oh, sure, you can buy spirits, tobacco and fragranced fripperies till your heart’s content. But try getting stranded there for a day without essentials – amongst spurious rumours of an onward flight to South America – and you’ll see what I mean. Toothpaste? Forget it. Change of ordinary underpants? Not a hope in hell. Deodorant? Frankly, unpleasantness has reared its ugly head in Madrid.

‘Which brand would sir like?’ asked a particularly effeminate Spaniard, leading me by the wrist to his products, and then dropping back to cop a glance at my buttocks. Yep, I caught him at it; so I clenched and winked. Well, smiled whilst I happened to blink unskilfully and accidentally. ‘Calvin Klein, perhaps?’ he continued, in a manner so oily that one could have fried chips with it.

‘Prices start from €16, sir’ he finished soupily, and he did something peculiar with his hand. €16? For a stick of deodorant? Are you f…? Where are Boots and Superdrug? He tutted, yet bade me an exultant farewell, and minced off to attend to another customer, leaving me wondering what on earth is so special about this deodorant. Well, needless to say, sir wasn’t bowled over with enthusiasm to purchase said product. Sir was supposed to be on a budget. And, come to that, sir oughtn’t even to have been here.

‘There will be a 55-minute delay,’ an announcer had declared in one of Heathrow T3’s departure lounges. Should be OK, I’d murmured to myself naively. Still got time to change planes. Of course, had I known then that those dashed Frogs were plotting a concerted air strike, I might have gritted my teeth more vigorously.

Honestly, if it’s not port blockades with that lot, it’s air traffic controllers refusing to man the radar. And if it’s not airport personnel stoutly shirking work – due, I imagine, to a flagon of Burgundy for lunch – it’s doubtless something else. You know what the French are like: a gelded stallion for luncheon and a foal for supper. Incomparably potty, the lot of them.

No, actually, nuttiness and idleness notwithstanding, most of the time I applaud their attitude. Their  “pull the ladder up, Jack; sod the rest” philosophy is not necessarily a bad thing. But, with a little present wrapped up in silk sheets in a Brazilian hotel that evening, I was hardly tickled pink at the delay. After all the confusion – and refuelling to skirt French airspace – we arrived in Madrid two hours late.

‘The flight to Sao Paolo?’ I asked, fingers and toes crossed. ‘Gone,’ answered the thickset man behind the information desk. He looked as if he would lose little sleep over my plight. ‘What about Miami, Quito and Cancun,’ asked others. He shrugged and directed us to a queue at the Iberia desk snaking a hundred metres along the concourse.

On the way – in fact every eighty yards or so – smokers puffed merrily away in little booths with open doors and no roofs. Ah, but this was November; apparently (according to my anonymous source in the south of Spain) the country has recently seriously banned smoking instead of simply pretending. So, at Spanish bars from now on, there will be no more butts amongst the tortilla crumbs and spittle. Seems almost a shame.

‘I give you voucher for lunch and dinner,’ said the placatory desk clerk after a lengthy delay, whilst I snarled at some French lesbians.. And, after a spot of further prompting: ‘Yes sir, and a hotel if you want.’ Course I bloody do. Think I’m going to pace barefoot for the next twelve hours until the overnight flight? Ahem. Ooh, but look: a ray of sunshine. Well, more of a blob, really.

As serendipity would have it, I arrived at the hotel in time to enjoy a complimentary bottle of red with three girls from Surinam. ‘Three kisses,’ demanded Tess after I’d kissed only two of her cheeks. How was I to know that the third smacker wasn’t to be planted in the middle? She blushed.

Dinner was quite another matter. There was rather an unseemly queue for the hotel restaurant…so, bristling with élan, I brushed past the maitre d and sat down opposite an English girl. Granted, beggars can’t be choosers – she had dreadlocks and, as I soon discovered, a fetish for needles – but there was an open bottle of wine on the table. And I’d seen she was alone at the airport.

‘Sorry I’m late, honey,’ I gushed ostentatiously and drew up a chair. The waiter, hitherto debating whether to throw me out, seemed satisfied and brought me an extra glass and some cutlery for the buffet. Things were looking up. ‘I’m really only going to South America to escape a raging drug addiction,’ said the pretty Rastafarian eighteen-year-old. ‘I just love ketamine.’ Oh, the small talk at these black tie events, eh?..

‘The funny thing,’  adds Mark, ‘is that we don’t even listen to U2 at home. But I love the excitement here amongst the fans: that angst, that knot in your stomach half an hour before you go in. Then the elbows everywhere; places guarded jealously; every man for himself.  And then we’re all friends again at the end.’ Some of the fans – I mention no names – have come out of the first show and begun queuing for the next show the following night. Now that is, beyond question, madness. I can’t budge on that one, I’m afraid.

The next candidate is Theresa, a Portuguese scientist. She’s a really big fan, but has only come to two shows. And, rather prudently, she doesn’t want to jump on Bono and kiss him to death. ‘I want to have an intelligent chat with him instead,’ she giggles. ‘I’d ask him why they don’t do the other really nice songs from the ‘80s and even ‘90s. They could do better, I think.’

‘Just OK?’ she asks suddenly, thunderstruck at my bullish indifference. She’s genuinely shocked that I think U2 are simply OK, rather than life-changingly marvellous. Well, they are OK – I quite like all that jolly “oooooohing” in the background night after night, but it doesn’t give me goosebumps. ‘Ah, you’re just being polite, right?’ she asks. I force a smile. It seems pointless to mention I’d prefer Barber’s Adagio for Strings any day of the week; or that a hard bop jazz quintet with front-line brass has me instantly basking in plenitude. No, far better to beam gaily.

I had meant to consult a larger cross-section of the audience on their pottiness, but this weather is vile now – and worsening by the minute. Hoi polloi are sinking beneath their tarpaulins once more, whittling away the remaining nine hours till the concert without protest. Still, at least they don’t have to drive the 2366km to Rome afterwards.

‘Mark, old prune,’ I say, looking up at the brooding firmament, ‘I’ll have to leave you lot in your own vomit, I’m afraid. I’m off to enjoy a leisurely Number Two on a comfortable toilet indoors, and then think about visiting Catering for some lobster ravioli. Tonkerty-tonk for now, and all that.’ He and Lorraine wave merrily and we promise to be “friends” on Facebook.

Well, I don’t get very far. My final interviewee for the day, a social butterfly hopping ebulliently through the crowd, is Lucia from Rome. In a certain light she looks like Pamela Anderson…whilst in others, like a Carthaginian General. It’s the nose. Anyway, today she resembles the former, so the friendly chat will be conducted in the truck, I think, over a bottle of particularly fruity Argentinian Malbec. ‘That’s it, you make yourself comfortable on the bed, dear,’ I coo, ‘and I’ll try and invent some leading questions.’

Hang on a minute, she’s not taking this seriously. Tickling my back while I assemble notepad and pencil wasn’t supposed to be on the programme. ‘We call this grattino,’ she says in her thick Italian burr, increasing the tempo somewhat. Well, I must say, it certainly hits the spot. Crikey, that’s definitely the spot. End of transmission…………

There are two extremes. On one hand, there is the crew. Few of us bother watching a show while on tour, be it Madonna, Bon Jovi or, in this case, U2. We tour primarily to pay our mortgages. Free travel, and chasing providers of milk and love, are arguably splendid bonuses, but fundamentally we’re in it for the cash.

On the other hand, there is a curious breed: the fans. Without them, of course, none of us, including the stars on the stage, would have a job. So they really ought to be treated with kid gloves. ‘Sad fuckers,’ summarises Gentleman Steve, with characteristic aplomb.

What makes U2 fans – or any fans, for that matter – tick, then? What encourages perfectly sensible bipeds to part with large amounts of the green stuff and queue in the rain for hours? Tell you what, I’ll pop out and ask them.

It so happens that I’m parked outside Coimbra’s stadium in Portugal (in late September 2010). The truck has been jauntily abandoned on the roadside, as though I’m quickly popping into the newsagent to ask for directions. And, of course, Namibian has pulled up behind me – this is our camping spot for three days. ‘At least the shop’s not far,’ he croaks, a lugubrious figure staring out the windscreen at the drizzle. ‘Maybe 500 metres, or it might be half a kilometre.’ Yep, same old Namibian.

Anyway, let’s meet the Great Unwashed on the other side of the security cordon. Staunch supporters, Mark and Lorraine get first shot at an interview, I think – the Coimbra show will be their 20^th show in a row, ratcheting them firmly into the Hall of Nutters. ‘If you put the hours in, it’s a great craic,’ enthuses Liverpudlian Mark, squinting at me through the rain. I nod, mentally running through a checklist of activities that would appeal to me less than paying to stand here: poking myself in the eye; a blind date with one of Namibian’s wife’s friends; drowning, perhaps?

But they also talk some sense. Having run a restaurant in California for twelve years, Mark has this to say: ‘It isn’t smog in LA – it’s faecal material from every time somebody opens their mouth. Out there, it’s “what do you do?”, not “how are you?”’ They’re glad to be living in Spain now, as far as I can tell, and they are squandering their rapidly dwindling funds on following U2 around Europe.

I say “rapidly dwindling” because they’ve admitted spending £25-30,000 as fans over the last two years. Hotels, concert tickets, travel and board start to add up, of course. But are they certifiably insane? Well, let’s put it this way: if I had a spare ten grand floating around, I would whiz down to Antarctica like a shot – it’s my dream. So to spend two or three times that sum, to spend summers following the biggest band in the world, may not be quite as crackers as I’d thought.

‘Queuing is definitely part of it,’ admits Lorraine. ‘But it’s also about the people you meet.’ Looking around the crowd, I see that the hardcore fans are bonding. They recognise each other from previous tour dates and are having a barrel of laughs cowering under tarpaulins, swapping addresses and photos. The atmospheric prospect of using a portaloo must also be part of the craic, I imagine..

The dreaded hour has arrived. I “gown up”, along with a dozen other people, and head into the operating theatre. Yes, I did say a dozen. Maybe that’s why they call it the delivery room – with all these blighters milling about, I’m half expecting a Fedex parcel and a crate of milk to arrive as well. Who are all these people? Surgeons, surgeons’ assistants, knife sharpening trainees, a couple of lads from the job centre, a school girl on work experience…

‘This feels like washing up in my tummy,’ says Melissa, as the scrum on the other side of the curtain test their weapons. Then, before I can say Theo Hudson Davies, there is a gurgle. And another. Seconds later, a small chap appears, covered from head to toe in whale fat. Wow! No cloven hoofs, no dislocated neck. He’s a placid, perfectly-formed boy, weighing in at 8lbs 2oz – the absolute newt’s testicles, or whatever the expression is. And he’s handed to me without a manual.

‘Aah, he’s got big feet,’ says the female anaesthetist, smiling at the adorable ray of sunshine in my arms. Well, more of a blob, actually. ‘Big feet, massive cock,’ I splutter, shattering the ice into a thousand shards, rather than politely breaking it. Melissa tuts disapprovingly. ‘Or is the expression “cold hands, warm heart”?’ I add, gabbling now from frayed nerves. The anaesthetist pointedly ignores me.

We amble into the recovery room together, Theo and I, to, well, recover, I suppose. Melissa’s still fooling about in the theatre, being sewn up and no doubt apologising to the girls on my behalf. So it’s just the two of us – and one of us is technically a grown-up. Now I don’t mind admitting that this is one of those moments when the old tear ducts leak a bit. OK, so I’m trading the taunting of Namibian on the Shakira Tour for nipple shields and nappies, but, By George, it’s worth it. Yep, I look rather dishy in these nipple shields.

‘He looks totally like you, and nothing like me,’ complains Melissa, her itchy nose still wrinkling from the morphine. ‘So I want a maternity test.’ Well, I’m not so sure he does. For starters, I don’t wear a nappy during the day any more; and secondly, when he lies on his back, waggling his legs in the air, he’s the spitting image of his mother. Sorry, couldn’t resist that one. And, to be fair, he really only looks like me during periods of bodily disquiet – exactly the same facial expression, I’m told.

A few days pass. A foot of snow builds up on the motorcar outside, and we while away the hours drinking tepid, health-and-safety-temperature tea. At some arbitrary hour, decent reading material exhausted and a heavy-lidded torpor stealing upon me, I open the leaflet entitled, “Guide for New Dads”. Good lord, the NHS has a sense of humour: ‘The sudden loss of a sex life can be very frustrating for a man,’ it reads, stating the bloody obvious. ‘But it’s OK to ask your partner for a potentially exciting cuddle, as long as she doesn’t spit daggers.’ Mmm, no comment.

As we leave the hospital, potentially exciting cuddles in eminently short supply, a thought occurs: we haven’t got a receipt for Theo. Isn’t that odd? Well, maybe it isn’t – after all, some people are still searching in vain for a name at this point. And in this town, that’s a rum thing; I did hear of a couple who thought Chlamydia was a lovely name for a girl. Well, I suppose it does roll off the tongue…

Would you join me in a toast? Firstly, three cheers for Melissa, for such a sterling job. And secondly, altogether now after three: ‘Whatho Theo!’

A month? Oh, I’m awfully sorry – those promised four weeks have morphed effortlessly into almost eight. So what’s been happening, you wonder? Well, to give a filleted version of events: civil war erupted in Rio barely hours after I’d left; and that florid-faced celebrity, Namibian, has decimated food stocks on the Shakira Tour. Munich, I think the last reports hailed from.

I shall endeavour to chronicle Brazil – and no doubt recent travels to Italy and Morocco, too – in due course. For now, though, let’s deal with the present. We’re still crossing our fingers for successful data recovery from that infernal hard drive, but the latest news is glum – Stage One failed. ‘And Stage Two is expensive without guarantees,’ said the computer girl with a baleful, sadistic glint. Bereft of suitable pictures, then, this may explain today’s irrelevant selection rustled up from the tropical archives. Think of them, perhaps, as a soufflé whipped up on the hoof from an empty pantry. I’m doing my best.

Talking of food, would you like a choice morsel or two from my literary stove? Or shall I stop tying myself in metaphorical knots and plough headlong, without further preamble, not to put too fine a point on it, into the big news? Ooh, it’s really big. In fact, it’s a humdinging, bobby dazzler of a bombshell. I’m a father. No, you needn’t blink, rub your eyes and stare aghast at your screen in sheer disbelief. I’ll write it again: I’m now a father. Yep, that means I had sex.

You needn’t worry – I’m not going to blather incessantly like some righteous crusader, extolling fatherhood and denouncing the childless. Neither am I going to weep at those wasted halcyon weekends in Vegas, frolicking with strippers whilst the far more fulfilling path of parenting lay ahead of me if only I’d seen the light. Ooh, I’m bordering on mendacity there; it was a photographer in Vegas. No, instead, I’m going to take the piss out of the whole thing. Call it a defence mechanism, if you like, but I do tend to see a funny side to most situations.

This idea of becoming a dad has been a scream from the outset. I’m sure the mother will agree – oh, what a jape this is, she must have thought, pinned down on a cold slab in the operating theatre. Anyway, I drove Melissa – she’s the lucky girl, by the way – to Hastings Conquest Hospital for her caesarean on November 30^th. Yes, obviously it was a “sun roof” job – I didn’t get where I am today by hanging around waiting for women’s waters to break.

Too posh to push, is she, you ask? Good heavens, no – she lives in a numbered house. Frightful, I know, and…Ah, can I just check that everybody grasps my sense of humour before I continue in this satirising vein? Let it be said for the record that I have the utmost admiration for women enduring this madness, from kick-off to final whistle: pregnancy, childbirth, breastfeeding, deranged hormonal torrents of abuse etc. All the same, it’s frightfully handy to be issued an exact, unwavering date to turn up as a birthing partner.

‘Have we got everything we need for the hospital?’ asks Melissa pleasantly, glad that I’m in the country. ‘Think so,’ I reply, ‘the flask and sandwiches are packed.’ Her eyes darken a little – an interesting concept, given she’s half French-Moroccan. Let’s say, “narrow menacingly” instead, so you get the gist.

You see, because of the impending epidural, she’s not allowed anything to eat or drink, neither before the operation nor for a good while afterward. ‘Crikey, good job you reminded me,’ I yelp, sitting bolt upright now and skirting her thunderous expression. ‘I nearly forgot the mince pies.’

So here’s the scene: I’m tucking voraciously into a rather splendid picnic whilst Melissa starves on a hospital bed. Her lips are cracked from dehydration, and she’s famished. ‘Ooh, you wouldn’t like this coffee,’ I coo occasionally to pacify her. What? It’s no good raising your eyebrows – I’m supposed to be eating for two now, aren’t I? If this child is to develop into a hale bouncing boy…Wait a minute, why do we say, “bouncing”?

I can almost guarantee that, if dropped from an appreciable height, he would do little more than “thud”, and then bawl his tiny eyes out. Oh, there’s another myth, by the way – that babies cry. Granted, when not sleeping or mucking about with milk, they caterwaul like the clappers, but do you notice any actual tears? Nope, they’re faking it; they’ve got nothing to worry about and no responsibility. Regardless, I need to keep my strength up – to torment this thudding, caterwauling alien when he arrives.

And he’s almost here. In Part Two, if I’ve got any readers left after such a protracted absence, we’ll meet a little boy. The publishing date will be December 14^th at 12.00 GMT..

‘What you want to do,’ advised Gentleman Steve, ‘is put all your photos on an external hard drive.’ He paused, leaned back, and forked in another mouthful of supper before volubly continuing. ‘And then delete them off your computer.’ Sounds good, I thought, envisioning a pretty nippy browser after 10 GB of pictures had been erased.

What I hadn’t considered is that my Maxtor External Drive, on a capricious whim designed to drive me up the proverbial wall, might give up the ghost. Yes, two years’ worth of photos have disappeared – temporarily or not, I’m as yet unsure. So, as far as I’m concerned, you can blame Steve and his preposterous bilge for a major disruption to my published blogs.

Still, a Davies defeated does not stay defeated for long. The girl in the local computer shop – attired in white laboratory coat, as though she ought to be mixing heinous potions – is dealing with matters as we speak. ‘£35 please,’ she said, ‘but I can’t guarantee retrieving the data.’ I may have paraphrased slightly there, but you get the gist. So can you all please cross your fingers – on that hard drive are some corking photographs due to feature on this site.

While she’s dealing with that, who is going to deal with that duplicitous toad, Gentleman Steve, you ask? Well, I’ve a good mind to head summarily down to Bristol to fetch him a lusty cuff round the ear. What he wants is torturing and flogging to within an ace of his life. Or maybe we could just catch up over a nice cup of tea? We’ll see.

You’ve noticed perhaps, that despite finally finishing the U2 European Tour and being at home, that I’m being a bit sniffy? Well, you’d be right. Bad luck comes in threes, they say? Pah! Child’s play. I’m up to half a dozen at least – mostly due to gross ineptitude on my part, admittedly – so do you mind if I have a little rant? I really only wanted to announce that the blog is on hold for three weeks…but I’m winding up into a vortex of intemperate rage and I could use an outlet.

Right, well skirting the issue of car insurance salesmen that ought to be shot for embezzlement, we’ll head straight to my front door at the seaside in England. We’ll also skirt the toppling, thigh-high pile of letters stacked neatly on the dining room table. (Post is ferried diligently from the front door by my delightful, ancient neighbour, Dot, while I’m away.)

Actually, we might need to address that towering column fairly soonish – one of the first letters informs me that the house insurance expired in September. The next one will no doubt be from the mortgage company informing me that they’ll repossess the property next time I pop out for a granary bloomer from the bakery.

So, without preamble, I pick up the telephone – the pressing plan is to ring round some insurance companies pretty swiftly. Now, where did I put the mobile phone charger? The old battery looks as though it could do with a few extra horsepower. Oh, bloody typical. I left it at my father’s house last night, a trifling distance of 200 miles away. But of course I don’t know this until I’ve turned the car on its head, hissing sibilantly in self-castigation.

Returning to the front door of my uninsured house – will it collapse or combust before I can secure an online quote? – I find it locked. ‘Awfully sorry to bother you again, old reptile,’ I address Dot at her doorway. ‘But I’ve done it again. There’s just no end to it, you know,’ She looks up from somewhere approaching waist-height and hands me the spare key. ‘Ooh, you don’t have to tell me, duck,’ she cackles, ‘we’ve only got five television channels this evening.’

Right, well if that’s the nadir of her afternoon, then excuse me if I don’t brim over with sympathy.

Anyway, three weeks folks. No, tell you what, make it a month – I’m taking a well-earned break.

P.S. These U2 photos have been generously supplied by a reasonably attractive Italian girl I happen to know…