Fantastic video montage of Hed Kandi party at Space in Ibiza, including Peyton & Lovely Laura!!

It seems every year my exit from Australia, after what has become an ‘annual’ Peyton tour down under, gets more and more difficult, more and more emotional.  Every year for the past five years now I have had the great adventure of spending some time performing in Oz during their summer months, and each year the tours have been getting longer, the gigs bigger, the romantic liaisons deeper, the departure harder.  When David realized my tears were from having just said goodbye to my Australian family of friends I fall a little more in love with each year (a family that keeps growing!) a look of relief crossed over his face and he reminded me that these were tears of joy, for they would lead me back to those people again and again.  Then he did something REALLY useful, and took me all over town to show me just how many posters and billboards were staring back at me with my own face.  The city of Seoul was literally plastered in Peyton in anticipation of my concert at M2, the city’s most legendary and biggest House music venue where, thanks to David, just about every significant name in the business has played or performed at some point.  Admittedly the ego-stroking helped, although there was one person I left behind in Sydney for whom I would have gladly exchanged every poster, just to have one more lazy night of languishing in bed watching episodes of Gossip Girl and eating Tim Tams.  Even if Seoul had staged an entire Peyton parade to welcome me back, it wouldn’t have gone far to alleviate that kind of missing.  That is precisely what sucks, and what is so extraordinary about  . . . . well, you know.  Falling. 

Staring at a chewy pan au chocolat and a lukewarm cup of coffee this morning in the Kuala Lumpur airport I realized I am in the advanced stages of delirium.  Surrounded by ubiquitous duty free shops I have seen a million times the world over, and reeking of the new Dior Sport fragrance (which smells suspiciously of the cheap Brut cologne I used to wear when I was fourteen) that in a moment of weakness I allowed a sales lady wearing a nylon head scarf to hose me down with, I sat there by myself in the uninspiring fluorescent surroundings of the Delifrance Café and got so lost in my own preposterous romantic fantasy that I almost missed the boarding call for my flight to Manila.   This journey is taking forever, and as is often the case on painfully long journeys, it’s my imagination that I count on for survival.   Although this morning I really let myself go for it.  By the time I finally heard the words FINAL CALL and realized they were referring to my flight, I had fallen so madly in love with the unexpected stranger (educated, worldly, spiritual but not remotely religious, funny to the point of making me laugh until I can’t breathe, and a little insane) who would most certainly be waiting for me at my next destination, that I had picked out the paint for our get-way house in the south of France, named our Cocker Spaniel, and prepared a speech to my agent announcing that I would be abandoning the rest of my tour in the name of true love!  I could just hear myself quoting the words of Luther Vandross, “who needs to go to work to hustle for another dollar, I’d rather be with you ‘cause you make my heart scream and holler.”    Ahhh . . .  yes, imagination is a truly splendid thing.  I suspect it’s what’s keeping most of us alive.  God help those who have none!

By the time I snapped out of it and started running to my gate, I was belly laughing out loud at myself so hard that the people close by stared at me as if I were a madman and quickly moved out of my way.   Regretfully my dreamy good mood was soon extinguished at the gate, when once again I had to guzzle down a whole bottle of water before putting my bags through the x-ray machine, even though it was water purchased inside the terminal, just a few steps from where I was being told to discard it.   The rules seem to be different from airport to airport, and it’s one of those things that makes me completely nuts.  What’s up with this world conspiracy to keep us all dehydrated on planes??   It’s a monumental load of shit, that’s what it is! 

Yesterday I left my sunny temporary home of Sydney, and at some point (hopefully tonight) I am going to arrive in a place called Cebu, somewhere in the Philippines.  I have never been to Cebu, and judging by how long it’s taking me to get there, I’m not surprised.   The unexpected layover in Brisbane was nothing compared to the eight and a half hour layover in Kuala Lumpur, and I still have Manila to go before starting the last leg of my journey to Cebu.  The bad lighting, the bad food, the badly dressed airport staff with bad attitudes, the bad back brought on by badly designed seating  . . . it’s all part of a world conspiracy to make world travel as unromantic and dehydratingly dreary as possible.  And yet, here I am - still dreaming in transit.  And most importantly, still laughing at myself.  Thankfully the aviation authorities have not yet included dreaming and laughter on their list of what is restricted on flights, although I suspect it won’t be too long before they do.    

(On the way to Paris . . . )

Anyone who has ever taken a class in the Romantics knows that romance is a word  meaning much more than the image it conjures up today of a couple enjoying a candlelight dinner with soft music playing in the background.   Romance is a way of life, or better yet a way of living your life.  It is a candlelight dinner with you and life itself, while your favourite music blares unrestrainedly from every far corner of your imagination.  For me, this is generally anything by Rachmaninoff.  I don’t pretend to be an aficionado of classical music, but for me . . . Rachmaninoff (no, NOT a Hed Kandi CD!!)  is the music that plays on while me and life twirl spaghetti noodles around silver forks and feed each other lovingly.   For the past hour I have stared out the window onto the frosted and remarkably flat landscape from my seat on the Eurostar, and enjoyed the spectacular setting of a sun that was so orange, one could be forgiven for thinking it was sponsored by Tropicana.  I’m in a fevered state of excitement tonight, and until a moment ago I was not quite sure why, although I think I may have just figured it out!  Tonight is officially a full moon, and according to the frumpy Canadian lady sitting behind me who cannot help speaking in a manner perhaps more appropriate for political conventions than train journeys, the moon will appear particularly large due to its proximity to the earth, or some such.  Hearing this has made me happy, almost giddy in fact, in a way that begs explanation.  Chances are I’ll hardly have a chance to see it while I’m in Paris, where I’ll be spending most of my short time inside yet another nightclub.   However, just the thought of a full moon, in Paris, on a cold December night, has got my stomach in the kind of knots usually only brought on by love itself.   Tonight, no doubt I shall be a little in love with everything and everyone, but most of all I will be madly in love with that moon, even if I only get to lay eyes on it for a few fleeting moments in a taxi ride from the hotel to the club.  It will be a brief, but passionate French affair.  And as with all good French affairs, I have no intention of being faithful . . .  after all I have a date booked at the historic restaurant L’Escargot, where I intend to indulge in a few of my other great loves:  snails in garlic butter, fois gras and Sancerre! 

 It's 6am again, an hour I seem to find myself writing at quite a lot these days.   I'm at the airport in Hurghada waiting to fly back to Cairo where I'm spending a few days recording before returning to London.  This week has been well spent in the company of people I've come to consider my Egyptian 'family,' in a beautiful oasis on the Red Sea called El Gouna, known here as the St. Tropez of Egypt.  There are more yachts than cars, and everyone wears sunglasses twice the size of their heads so that the words Dolce & Gabbana can be written in a font large enough to be read from outer space.  This has been my third trip to Egypt this year, and once again I have been completely blown away by the caliber of parties these people throw.   Each event I have experienced has been on a par with the very best parties I've found anywhere in the world, including Ibiza.  In my humble opinion (based on vast experience of course), there are three key ingredients to a great party:  music, location, and crowd.   And in Egypt, they seem to have the best of all three.   But I'm also aware that I've had an exceedingly privileged view of a very small minority here, and that this is not the norm.   In fact, you could pretty much say this about my experiences everywhere.   Wherever I go, I'm usually being hosted by the funkiest people in the land, who are often the very people responsible for introducing the whole concept of House music and clubbing to that particular country.  Take my friend Miggy in Seoul for example.  The first time she flew me over for one of her parties, she humbly explained, upon introduction, that she had single-handedly introduced the concept of partying to South Korea.  Strange to think that 'partying' could actually have a definitive origin, like calligraphy, or Kabuki, but there you go!   A few years along, and she now has a small but enthusiastic army of supporters who are carrying the torch, and thanks to Miggy there is a healthy enough love for House music there now to keep me and many others in regular demand!  But it all started with this woman whose number I now have in my mobile phone and who usually picks me up personally from the airport.  And then of course, at the clubs you find yourself sitting in the VIP section, being introduced to 'Thailand's most famous artist' or 'Russia's top model,'  or 'the world's most celebrated belly dancer,' etc.  Of course, they don't look remotely familiar, but you know that it's all true and it's the social equivalent to hobnobbing with Kate Moss and Richard Gere at some celebrity function in London or Manhattan, except that you can't quite remember anyone's names after being introduced, or even pronounce them for that matter.   Still, I like the idea of it.  Last week I was leaving the club after my gig in Seoul at 5am, and a rather handsome Korean man was arriving who looked vaguely familiar.  It took me a few seconds, but after he grabbed me and said my name a few times with the kind of enthusiasm I usually only get from my parents at an airport, I remembered that we've met several times before, and that he's always being introduced to me as "Korea's most famous actor."   Everyone around was watching, with scorching jealousy no doubt, as Korea's very own Jude Law practically lifted me off the ground with excitement, while I racked my brain for his name. 

To be honest, I have never been one to get very excited about celebrities.  I think my many years of waiting tables in New York and London sort of quenched any great awe I might have held for them, as I swear I must have served a Cappuccino to just about every western superstar at some point or another, and being so close wasn't really all it's cracked up to be.  In fact, it was often disappointing.   I have a terrible habit of looking too closely at things like cuticles, toes and teeth, and it's just downright depressing to see how savagely Robbie Williams bites his nails, or how smoke-stained John Malkovich's teeth are.   But when I'm in Beijing, waiting for another bottle of Moet to arrive at my table of 'special' guests, languishing in the opulence of the Suzie Wong club, the shallow self-conscious show-off down deep inside gets the best of me, and I love the fact that everyone around me is actually way more famous than I am, and yet THEY all know MY name while I can barely pronounce theirs.  It makes me laugh, especially as I'm likely to be the only one at the table wondering how much that Champagne is gonna cost and whether or not I can actually afford it.