I am the girl from the subway - James Blunts Muse

After all these years of staying silent, its time to admit the truth, it's me, I am the girl from the subway and this is my story about how I worked out for certain that it was me. But its not just the one song that is about me, there are also quite a few others. Its also a thank you to James for writing some lovely songs and I am happy that I was able to provide him with some inspiration as his muse who some of the songs are about.  

Transcript

Podcast – I am the girl from the Subway James Blunts secret MUSE.

This weeks additional podcast will probably surprise all of my family and friends, the one person that it won’t surprise is James Blunt.  Don’t worry I have not gone crazy and I would not be publishing this podcast if I was not 150% sure that this was true. It is entitled I am the Girl from the Subway – James Blunts Muse.

It was 2nd November 2002, I think anyway, I know that it was Bonfire Night I have worked out the year by discounting other things that had happened, so I think that is the actual date.  My boyfriend at the time and I had gone down to London for my birthday, which is on 26th October, I was born in 1973.  We were going to watch Chicago which stared Gabby Roslin. We found out that there was a free fireworks display at Battersea Park on the same night, we had an early dinner, went to watch the fireworks and went to watch the musical. On the way back from the fireworks, I passed him in the subway, I a slim, shortish man, with scruffy looking longish brown hair, our eyes met amongst a crowd of people. I could see that he was as high as a kite, but there was also a flash of light when our eyes met and I felt an instant connection to him, something that I have never experienced before or since.  From the look on his face, it was as if a cherub had drawn back his bow and shot it straight through his heart.  All I could do was to smile at him as I walked by and my boyfriend at the time, gripped my hand a bit tighter as he saw the way that this man was looking at me as well.  Then we carried on and that was that, it was just a moment on the subway.  Since then I have walked past thousands of other faceless people and I never remembered any of those.

When James Blunt came out with the song You’re Beautiful, I thought it was strange that it was a very similar moment describing exactly what had happened. He looked very similar, but by 2005, I had put on quite a lot of weight and my then boyfriend was now my husband and I was really happy and James said that it was an ex girlfriend, so I wasn’t sure that it was me.  My now ex husband and I did go to see James in 2006 in Birmingham, he came quite close to us, but he didn’t look at me directly and there was no flash of light.  If I am honest, I went away from the concert feeling a little disappointed that it wasn’t me.  

Then all sorts of rumours started emerging about James Blunt, he was caught cheating on his girlfriend, then seemed to be sleeping around with lots of supermodels, rumours that he was gay, he was living the typical drug filled music star lifestyle which just wasn’t me. I didn’t do drugs, I didn’t need them, I was always a really happy upbeat person.  I also didn’t want to me famous, I didn’t want the press taking my photos, putting circles over cellulite, I have the wrong hair, it’s really fine and looks rubbish most of the time, especially if grown long.  I didn’t want people saying that I wasn’t beautiful, I had been bullied at school and the last thing that I wanted was to be bullied now, when I was happy. Then people turned on him, his music became unpopular it was a bit like marmite.  So I didn’t want people to turn on me if they found out it was me.  He also kept on saying that the song was about an ex girlfriend, so I thought well it must be.

I didn’t go to see him again, I bought most of his CD’s and listened to them when I was in the car, usually on a long journey, I remember one really scary journey I had to make on a work trip from Glasgow to Manchester, I was driving in the snow, cars crashing all around me, I really bit scared and I sang his music all the way and I felt that it kept me safe.  I felt guilty listening to his music if I was at home, I felt like I was betraying my ex husband.

I rarely dream but when I did I would dream about him, I just didn’t tell anyone. Then I kept seeing visions of him, sitting on a fence, waiting and I had this feeling that something was wrong.  I had a feeling that I just couldn’t shake, as if I had forgotten to do something and that time was running out.  In 2019 he released Once Upon a Mind and there were a couple of songs in there that really made me think.  One of them was The Truth and the video shows him in London and he is clearly looking for someone. He even goes into a shop like the one he goes into in Same Mistake and at the end of the song he sings “I will search with every fibre, if you’re out there leave a light on, cause the distance is getting wider and I know I’ve gotta find ya” and I knew that message was for me.

There is also a line in How it Feels to be Alive, which says you used my heart as your souvenir, so he knew that I was a tourist which fits exactly with where we were, I started to wonder at that point if he had followed me home.  But shortly after the song You’re Beautiful was released, a girl had moved from London to Cheshire and kept her horse on my horses yard, her husband was a Captain in the Household Cavalry, the same regiment that James had been a Captain in.  I found out much later on from my farrier in Scotland who had also been in the Household Calvary, the regimental farrier and James had been his Captain, that my friend’s husband was Captain at the same time as James had been.  It is likely that James saw my picture on Facebook and recognised me. 

When I look back, one of the lines in Don’t Give me Those Eyes is “It kills me that you are married” and then there had been 1973, the year of my birth, which he could have also got from Facebook and Bonfire Heart, it was Bonfire Night when we saw each other.  Then there was the song Stop the Clock, about being unable to stop time, which was how I had been feeling. If also seemed fated that I should have so many connections with his regiment wherever I was living.

It was Christmas 2019 the COVID pandemic was about to hit and I thought, what if it is me and something happens to one of us in the pandemic and we never know.  I had also got to the point that I needed an answer to the question, was it me.  I mean no one else had come forward, no ex-girlfriend had said, yea it was me.  So after watching Love Actually, inspired by Andrew Lincolns character, I sent him a message on Facebook.   He had always made it very clear that he did his own social media so I found his account on FB and said something like, I know you said it was a ex girlfriend that you saw on the subway, but I remember a similar thing happening to me, with a guy who looked just like you back then, he was high and he looked like he had been shot through the heart with an arrow, so as its Christmas, I just thought that I would check.

I thought that I would wait until the next album came out and see what the songs said. If I had checked his Twitter account on Valentines day 2020, the tweet was I am obsessed with you and I also didn’t notice that in June 2020, he changed the name of Once Upon a Mind album, to Time Suspended edition. In the beginning of April 2020, I had been made redundant and we were in danger of losing our farm house, I went to work in a hospital as part of a new COVID ward that was opening, but luckily it was never actually needed, as it was the only hospital in Scotland where we were now living, that was able to contain the virus.  Having caught COVID and been really ill and being unable to breathe at one point, I knew that I had antibodies to fight the virus off, hence going for the job as a Domestic which I was thankful to get, as jobs were scare at that time.  I looked so terribly ill with COVID, I did remember looking in the mirror and thinking James Blunt won’t think that I am beautiful now.  At the same time as I went to work in the COVID ward in April 2020, he dedicated his song The Greatest to NHS workers for looking after his father.

He released the Stars Beneath my Feet album in 2021, I was waiting to see what the new songs, were, the first one was Love Under Pressure and it was obvious to me that he was telling our story, “You didn’t show without a care, I am still there.  Yea how can it be, you do the maths, The fire that Burned has turned into Ash, well that fitted with Bonfire Night and I’m not giving up this time around” well that all fitted with our story again.  

Adrenaline was practically a re-write of the Facebook message that I had sent him, Unstoppable, well being an equestrian I lived in skinny jeans, it was autumn when I saw him and then the lines “Now Time won’t break the chain and now I know you and you know me” … well yet again it all fitted with our story.  

I found an old interview that he had done at Oxford University Press and it was the first time that I had heard him say in an interview that the person You’re Beautiful was about was a stranger.

I then went into meltdown, my marriage which I was really unhappy in at this point and my life that I had built for myself, went completely wrong.  I remember sitting on a bench outside my farm house thinking, that I was in the wrong life, I was supposed to be part of something big.

I heard an Interview that James did which is on You Tube in November 2021 one part is called The Truth, in which he says the Truth is in the songs, everything I do in real life is a lie.  

So after taking a massive courage pill I wrote to him, care of the Fox and Pheasant his pub, sent by recorded mail, saying I understood the words in the songs, having previously wondered why most of my life story seemed to pop up in a lot of them.  It was a very emotional letter, I said he looked really unhappy, I was concerned that he might be using drugs as he was always talking about being high and that he didn’t seem free and I have since noticed a Tick Toc Video on October 26th 2022, my birthday with a #pointless.

So I started commenting on a couple of his posts and I could see when he sang an unplanned version of Bonfire Heart on the Chris Evans Breakfast Show on 26 November 2021 that he just looked so excited and he was singing it differently, with more energy.  He then admitted in March 2022 that You’re Beautiful was about staking someone else’s girlfriend and not about an ex girlfriend.

I sent him a message on Instragram before one of his concerts that I went to in Germany saying that I still wasn’t sure it was me and he jumped off stage at that concert and ran around to see me in the crowd.  I went to see him 17 times on that tour as a way of apologising for not going to see him in the years before. I felt an enormous amount of guilt for not having supported him.  He did seem to be looking at me an awful lot when I was in the crowd, I had an incident in one German concert where one girl moved from the very front of the stage and came and stood right in front of me, as he was not looking at her but at me and people were whispering around me, saying that I was really pretty and that I was English.  When I had seen him in Glasgow, I had stood up to sing I Really Want You straight at him, it was a way of showing my support for him, but also to try and build my confidence up, which I had lost in my marriage.  I saw him fist pump at the end of the song and people were whispering maybe they are an item at the end of the concert.  He also mouthed Thank You to me in Dresden, when I was in the front of the crowd and everyone turned to look at me. I also heard an interview in Germany in 2022,   saying that he had a MUSE who some of the songs were about, by that stage I knew that it was me.

So I had to arrange to meet him, I donated a large sum to children in need to have lunch with him and I knew the instant that he walked it that it was him I had seen that day on the subway, he motioned from the bar, did I want a drink and then the first words he said to me when we sat down for lunch were forever.  I could see he was really nervous when he was chatting to me and I was a bit sad for what might have been, you see as soon as I met him I immediately got the feeling that we should have been together.  We had a lovey cuddle through in front of everyone on the This Morning team, as we gate-crashed their Christmas party 6th December 2022, he released his documentary One Brit Wonder on the anniversary of our meeting on 6th December 2023.  Shortly after we met, he brought out the song Can’t Forget you and since then he has released his book on my birthday 26th October 2022 and an album Who we Used to Be the following day. 

I recently saw a reel on Facebook of an interview with today Australia about 9 weeks ago and just after he says milking it, he says on her birthday and if you check his tour dates for Australia he is touring on my birthday, 26th October.  So he clearly wants people to know, but he is actually really insecure, lacks confidence and listening to his songs he is scared of rejection and as I didn’t come forward back then, I feel that it is on me to now come forward and say it’s me.

I am worried about what people with think as I am not an heiress or a supermodel and I don’t have any money, I am just a normal everyday person, no glamour, I don’t wear much make up, I don’t care about fashion, I spend most of my life in jodphurs, I like going out for nice meals, I am not really into beauty stuff, I like doing fun things, not the usually girly stuff.  I do really like his music though I always have, he sings about things he has done wrong, he failings, he self reflects about who he is as a person, which other people don’t he also overthinks just as I do, so he probably suffers from anxiety. I feel sad that I did not go to see him on this tour, but I wish him the very best for his Australian tour.

If it hadn’t have been for him finally getting the message out to me that the song is about me, I would have probably been still married and still not very happy, instead I am really happy in a new relationship with an amazing man, I have started a podcast and listening figures are growing, I am writing a book, I have run a marathon, four half marathons, I have raised a lot of money for charity and done tons of other things, which I have shoved up on Instagram ahead of releasing this podcast.  I am now a much stronger person, I no longer suffer from anxiety or stress and James seems a lot happier with his life as well.  

So I want to say thank you to James Blunt who has written some lovely songs about me, I hope that he has listened to my podcasts as I made them not only to help myself, but to help him as well and he seems to be growing and changing as a person and becoming more confident, which is great. He and his wife seem really happy and he now has a family which is great.  The message that I want to send to him and to everyone else that listens to my podcast is that obsessive love isn’t healthy, there’s more to life than getting high on drugs, money isn’t the most important thing, it may give you power but it doesn’t give you happiness, you find that inside yourself, you need to put others first, always give more than you take, if you are lying then the person you are hurting the most is yourself as you can’t be who you truly are, don’t keep secrets they eat you up inside and beauty isn’t on the outside it’s on the in inside and as the Beatles said All you need is Love.