Damon now has a brand new studio - a studio complex, almost, with space for Jamie Hewlett above it. "We can just muck about endlessly," he says. Downstairs, the builders are still finishing up, so we sit on the rooftop patio, right next to the train line which Damon has been told carries nuclear consignments once a day. Among the many things he has to say today, one is that his thoughts on Blur's potential reunion have hardened.

"It's best that we all just get on with our lives," he says. "That's my conclusion I've come to now. I've made that decision. I think it'd be a terrible mistake. It just seems pointless. It was a period of time, we did that, great - let's just get on with our lives. It would just be so obviously for money, and that's just shit."

Is it still in the diary?

"It's still in the diary, yeah. End of September."

But you're thinking of pulling the plug on it?

"It doesn't feel right. It feels like a disingenuous thing to do, on my behalf. I mean, my only reason for doing it is because I sort of said I would. But then again, I said I would before there was any indication that Graham might be interested, so maybe I said it just thinking that he'll never want to, so it was easy for me to say that." But now he's had to think about it. He wonders whether they should still meet up, but not here, not in the studio expecting to make music together. "And just see if there's is some genuine affection left between all of us... I don't know... it's really hard for me to talk about it. Everything I say is somehow not going to be the right thing to say for somebody."

[...] I ask him whether he has heard This Old Town, Graham's new single with Paul Weller. He has.

"It didn't make a great impression on me. But Graham doesn't seem to want to change at all, he just seems content making that kind of music. There's always an element of that fantastic thing Graham has when he picks up a guitar, but I don't think he's stretched himself anyway near enough. And that kind of really bothers me about us working together again - someone who has so much ability, to have done so little with it, in my opinion."

The main Blur issue clearly involves him and Graham, in a number of ways. "Look, it can never be defused, and never resolved, until Graham and I, face to face, sort our differences out. And that would be really nice, obviously. But whether it will actually happen or not, I don't know." [...]