Written – whilst on United Airlines 56 to San Francisco 

You know, I like to think of myself as a bit of an old romantic at heart. I love a little rom-com at the movies. Love a cuddle and a candle lit steak and sometimes will even send flowers; especially if I think it will aid my chances of scoring.

Last year in Cannes I’d sometimes in-between playing my Abba and sleeping, go down to the steps at the beach and sit with a packet of haribo bears and watch the world go by; day dreaming about one day meeting the girl of my dreams and what she’ll be like?

Would she be blonde or brunette? Would she try and make me have sex outside again and try and get us caught. (I hope not, I was scared stiff last time) Would she double check the door for me when we leave the apartment, if we were low on hand soap would she just go out and buy some more without being asked. Would she learn to love and support West Ham. Actually that’s not a deal breaker, as long as she’s not a Tottenham fan. (sorry Em)

And of course, how all of a sudden she will pop into my life?

I mean I must admit at times, I have gone looking for it and that’s when you never find it. Hovering around the frozen peas in Waitrose. At airports whilst trying to blag an upgrade (or at least an exit row), trying to get myself a hot stewardess, numerous nightclubs, facebook, even the girl at the clinic gave me her number, but no; she wasn’t the one either. Nice girl though.

Maybe I just needed to go back to basics, be more romantic, not look for it and it would find me.

Anyway, I’m going to take you back a year now, until last August, I was djing all summer long at the World Famous Hotel Martinez in Cannes. I was coming near the end of my stay, with about 3 weeks to go and  was starting to come out of my shell abit.  I found this cute little sushi restaurant for lunch, I made a couple of good friends and was even being a little more daring with my music. I played a song by the guy who formerly called himself prince (I know, get me!!)

So, the story begins. I think it was a Tuesday, although I can’t be sure, I awoke to find this envelope had been passed under my door. I was a little apprehensive at first as I though the hotel had reengaged on a deal to cover my washing and had send me a bill but no, I was wrong. As I opened it up, I appeared to be a love letter, of course it was all in French and I still don’t speak at dime, so I couldn’t be sure but it was sealed with a big red lipstick kiss, so I kinda got the gist, but how romantic!!

Wow, at once I came off facebook, had a shower, put on my speedos and ran to find Florance my bar manager friend to have her translate to me.

It read, “Monsieur James, I’ve noticed you around, I think you are a wonderful DJ, I’ve never felt this way about any DJ before, I have a house somewhere in France I think you should come stay with me. I’ve been watching you everyday now and I just know we would be perfect together”. (I mean, No Joke, this shit is real!)

But she never said who she was or gave any contact info, not even and address to reply back too, I didn’t know who she was. I mean; I like a little mystery and I don’t mind playing a few games at the start of our relationship but if this really was to be the girl of my dreams, I had to see her!

I mean she sounded perfect, own place, must have had a bit of cash flow behind her to be cruising around Cannes all summer, obviously liked Abba if she thought I was the best Dj ever. Why was she being such a little Multeaser like that??

Anyway this went on for a week or so, letter after letter under my door.  I was hoping that one day she would knock and say hi, but also how the hell did she know my room number, maybe she had someone on the inside?

Until one day Florence translated to me that, this would be the night she would come and introduce herself to me.

As you can imagine, my heart skipped a beat.  I was so excited. I could hardly wait till 6pm to start my set, I was in such a good mood. I even played man in the mirror again for the guys behind the bar for the humteenith time, I was in that gooda mood. I had been there 50 odd days already by now.

Florence came over with a little Pina Calorda to settle my nerves and I started to get into the rhythm of the evening. With every new person that came in the bar, thinking;  “is that her?”

Lots of cute little hotties were coming in, I was thinking, could it be, but no, no one approached me, time was going by now, the Maratchi band they had hired for the summer along with me and done there set, I had my steak dinner and was just about to return to work for the graveyeard shift when I get a tap on the shoulder.

Now I like an older Woman, just as much as I like and younger woman, or a little 18 year old but she was old; Face like a leather bag that had been run over my a double decker bus, no really! Scraggy long blonde hair that looked like it had never been washed, actually that part I was fine with; I don’t wash my hair either. And these great big claw like fake nails and the biggest teeth I’ve ever seen in my life, protruding from her face! Ahhhhhh! It was not a pretty sight.

“Hello James,  I’m Jacqueline”

My god, what had I done to deserve this, who had I pissed off up above?

I was polite and went to give her a kiss on the cheek and the cheeky little thing attempted to catch me on the lips with her tongue out.

With that I made my excuses and said hold on; I had to start my set, running off to the safety of my decks backing off like how the bird in Alien did from the Alien. 

She was one scary human being.

Florence comes over laughing at me with another Pina Colarda, a large one, asking who my hot date was; who by now was sipping a cocktail at the bar a few meters away grinning at me.  There wasn’t even anywhere I could go, I had to stand there and play Abba, I was stuck with her just staring at me. It was the strangest thing in my life.

At least if you meet a bird off facebook and she doesn’t look like her pictures as she gets of the train, you can do a runner before she sees you, but no, I was stuck there.

I didn’t even go back to talk to her, I just kept on motioning to her, a few more minutes and I submerged my head back behind the screen of my laptop, doing what I could to make myself look busy.

2am finally arrived with her still there watching me, I waved sort of goodbye and with that was off like a shot to my room, locking and even putting the security catch on my door to protect me. Barricading the bottom with packets of baby wipes and the coffee table.

Maybe she did know someone at the hotel?  All these thoughts started to go through my head.  God!  Maybe she had a key! That night I didn’t sleep a wink.

But it didn’t get any better, the letters kept on coming, and every night she was at the bar, grinning at me with her leather face and teeth, like she wanted to eat me for dinner.

Finally August 31^st came, I had survived something like two weeks with her there everynight just watching me, from the moment I started until, “New York, New York”, at the end; foaming at the mouth, chomping at the bit to get her Jaws into me.

I’d survived and it was time to go home back to the safety of the metropolis of London. I’d run out of wet ones anyway, so I had to go back.

I returned home and the memory faded. Autumn turned to Winter, the snow came and went and so did Christmas once more and here we are again now in the midsts of summer.

I’d forgotten all about her, until today when after just finishing a shoot in Hawaii and boarding a plane to San Francisco, I turned on my data roaming one time to many, logged into facebook and got the shock of my life to see, she had only bloody found me on facebook.  Even my silly name change to Jammy hadn’t thrown her off.

She was like a bloodhound tracking my scent. 

Hell, she’s probably at the airport waiting for me to land.

So if I make it to baggage re-claim and she hasn’t abducted (eaten) me, I think I might start going back on the hunt again rather than letting love find me.

At least then, I know what I’m getting

Wish me luck

 jtx

Written – finely matured until the time was right!

With July nearly Upon us once more, normally I would be counting down the seconds until I’m once again packed off and chained to my decks in the south of France for another summer. But as Luck would have it though, this year I don’t, I’m having a year off.  HOOORAY!!!

But I’ve just come across a chapter, I wrote; wow 2 years ago now, about settling into the life of an international DJ on a summer season.  

what’s so good about hopscotch anyway??

ENJOY ;) 

I just cannot decide what to do with myself tonight as I finally have another night off due to some firework display going on outside. Do I “A”, sit in my room alone, eat take out sushi and maybe a spot of room service and try and write a new chapter? “B”, Go and watch the fireworks and sit at another table for 1 and have another steak and hope I get accosted by some cute French girl? Or “C”, use the entirety of my daily food allowance on stella and some ice cream, play on facebook and watch porn?

Anyway it turns out that the James Taylor disco road show has been gathering pace of late and after someone told someone, who told someone else, I’ve only been invited out to be resident dj for the whole summer, at one of “The Leading Hotels of the World” and no! I don’t mean the Campanile Inn at Basildon off the A127. 

 So about a month ago now, I packed up my baby wipes, my toothbrush and my favourite, “Orlebar Brown” Swim shorts; in red, white, blue, yellow and black and hopefully, after that plug, maybe the gold, pink and the orange as well. J “ just kidding, well kinda” and made my way down by aeroplane to the French Rivera.

The hotel itself is beautiful, right on the seafront on some funny French road that sounds like a vegetable and all the staff are lovely too and I’m not just saying that because I have to as they might read this but they really are and I guess I’ve settled in rather well thinking about it, I’m actually the youngest person here who’s not accompanied by an adult which isn’t necessarily a bad thing as I’m a little bit odd myself and think I’m really 45 in my head and love Abba, and so do they, so everybody’s happy, although if I’m honest I’ve never had to work so hard in my life.

Tonight is only my second day off since I’ve been here and I work every night from 6pm till about 1am everyday, 2am on weekends. I mean don’t get me wrong, it’s not like digging a whole or putting the ship inside those small little bottles, I mean how do they do that?  But it is tough never the less. It’s baking hot till about 9pm, and unlike usual I can’t just play the same old party gold dust every night like you can with one off parties, as it’s the same audience for days at a time, so now I’m having to play obscure tracks like, “Does your mother know” and even last night, “Happy New Year”, although that didn’t go down to well, so maybe won’t play that again.

I have to say I do have a bit of a phobia of playing modern music. I don’t know why, it just scares me.  I’m fine up till a bit of, “Pump up the Jam” or even “Show me love” but after that it’s all a little out of my comfort zone for me.

So anyway as I said I’m settling in rather well, I have steak for lunch and steak for dinner and I’m allowed to have as much sparking water as I can handle and to be honest if I was actually paying for it myself that’s about I could afford.

But you see I can actually be a bit shy at times, and maybe even a little lazy, in the sense that I finish work, then play on my laptop for a few hours, sleep, get up late, play on my laptop a bit more go down to the restaurant have my steak and my water maybe sit on the beach for an hour and then I’m back in to my Abba mega mix again, and so on and so on rather than pushing myself and going out to do things and meet new people.

I mean I have met some lovely people out here but it’s a bit like being friends with the year above at school, they are there for a while and they leave and your all alone again and as I said there aren’t all that many girls here my age to look at either at least not without some hairy fat Russian in tow.

Anyway I heard that apparently all the young cool hip trendy people go to St Tropez. So with that the other day, on my first day off after two weeks straight work, I decided to shake myself up push myself out of my comfort zone and drag myself out of bed without checking who had poked me overnight or how many times Jim Jam Elder had posted on my wall and hired myself a little convertible smart car and with that was off to St Tropez.

I drove and I drove and I drove and eventually I arrived, I actually had a lot of fun, they are great little cars and mine made this really good noise so I just left it in third pretty much the whole way there.

I pulled up at some place called “Stacy Beach”. So there I am, and there are these two big burley French guys on the door to the gated compound and here’s me, in my bright yellow OB shorts hanging out of the roof of my little smart and they didn’t really want to let me in, but eventually after I gave them some of my hard earned euros they did.

So in I drive and everyone in there has gold plated rollers and lambo’s and Ferrari’s. So I park up and walk up to the girl on the reception and sheepishly was like, “Bonjour”, “excuse me, I’d like to come in please” and with that she looked me up and down and with that noise that all French people make, that kinda; “heeey”, sound, she clicked her fingers and this man then whisked me away with through the pool area past all the gaggle of pretty topless girls to a sun bed right the way at the back on it’s own by the fence, you could see how important I was.

I have to say I’ve never felt more intimidated in my life; everyone was brown and good-looking in big groups and jumping up and down on the tables, spraying champagne over each other. “I hate that”. More money than sense and there is nothing worse than when your walking past in your Sunday best and some little flash shit sprays you and your standing there soaked and stinking of the stuff.

Anyway, I was starting to wish maybe I would of stayed at the hotel and now that I was here, that I had not of had that cornetto on the way down and maybe had of gone to the gym first but decided it was time to stop being like a complete billy no mates party pooper and to try to get myself involved but it is kind of hard being the only person there who is by themselves.

I mean how do you just go up to a big group of people and be like, hey, I’m James can I play.  I mean it’s not as if I could even go in goal to tempt them.

So I order my €20 bottle of sparkling and off I head back up the long path to the pool back past the gaggle of topless girls (who were all French by the way and didn’t speak a word of English) and to where the main action was at.

There I am in my yellow shorts and holding (treasuring) my bottle of sparkling, you know making it last, and I dangle my legs in the pool and sit on the edge trying to look cool swaying to the music; you know as you do.  (No Abba though, sadly)

Now I guess I’m pretty used to doing things on my own, I can even just about stomach eating at a restaurant at a table for one, with everyone looking on like, where are all his friends? Weirdo! However I can proudly say still never to the cinema on my own, that’s just too weird even for me. I mean who would you cuddle up to when the scary bit came on or more relevant to me, who would I ask what the hell was going on in the film??

Although in this place, I just felt sooo out of place and by this point even the topless frenchies were nowhere to be seen. So I didn’t even have anything to look at. I felt abit like being back at school at lunchtime eating my ham sandwiches and jaffa cakes, in the corner of the playground, all alone by myself, looking on at everybody else playing hopscotch.

Eventually I didn’t managed to get talking to this group of guys by the pool, I think they were Swedish or something and they invited me over to their table. So we are all there and I’m trying my hardest to get involved although it’s pretty hard when everyone’s off their faces and I’m still on the fizzy; all be it by this time warm water.

But I really was trying extra hard to muck in and be one of the boys and to make myself have a good time, although still no girls or ABBA and then they too decided to start spraying champagne and that’s when I decided to call it a day, slipping off out the side gate, hopped in the smart, back past those grizzly bouncers and returning to the safe confines of my hotel.

In fact my favourite thing about the whole day was driving that smart car. Is that bad?

You see maybe I’m not as hip and trendy and cool as I make out, I mean yes everyone here may be 20 years older than me and I may moan about being on my own and not knowing very many people, but I feel safe here; I can eat my steak, wear my bright colours shorts and play my ABBA to who ever will listen and do you know what, I quite like being inside my little bubble.

I mean what’s so good about hopscotch anyway? And at least I get to eat my Jaffa cakes all to myself!

au revoir

jtx

 “ oh bonjour love”, “if you could just put the stellas and the ice cream on the table, ill be right there”