TomJordan.co.uk

It may not be cool to like them these days, but the Pet Shop Boys have always been one of my favourite groups. I can remember buying “Always on my Mind” as a 7 inch when I was a kid and their music has always featured in my life. The album “Nightlife”, for example, reminds me of being at University and staying up the whole night to start and complete the essay that was due the next day.

“Very” reminds me of school and the song “Later tonight” from the album “Please” is one of my all time favourite ballads.

Visually, the PSB have also always been a step or two ahead of other groups. Working with people like Mark Farrow from the start they’ve also collaborated with other visual heros of mine including stage designer Es Devlin and photographers/film makers Bruce Weber, Sam Taylor Wood, Martin Parr and Wolfgang Tillmans

It was great therefore to catch them at the end of the Brits this week where they were recipients of the Outstanding Contribution award and learn their new album is out soon, plus also catch news of an O2 show.

I hope this serves to remind the British public consciousness that Lennon/McCartney aren’t the only great British song writing duo we’ve produced.

Their Brit’s performance in case you missed it:

As mentioned in my earlier post, on Friday evening I was at London City Airport en route to Amsterdam. I love London City Airport: it’s small, quick to get through, £20 in a cab from my office or flat (compared to £15 for Heathrow Express or similar fares to Gatwick or Luton) and the staff treat you as human beings rather than cattle.

Also, as I’m not the biggest fan of flying, what I like about City is that I can get there early evening on a Friday, have a few beers and something to eat and before I know it I’m on the plane enjoying one more beer and then I have landed at my destination. The place is full of city boys doing the same thing, so there is a sense of camaraderie. (Or, alternatively, I am just a bit odd).

Anyhow, on Friday there I was waiting for my flight to Amsterdam, which was showing as being delayed by almost 2 hours. Annoying, especially as the VLM flight due to take off at the same time made it away quickly. But then, all of a sudden the status changed to “Cancelled”.

As we now know, the crash landing of the incoming flight from Amsterdam was unfolding.

Not that you’d know from inside the airport! As other flights started to show “cancelled” or simply disappeared from the departure screen people started to gather round the information desk. All the staff would say is that there had been an “incident on the runway” and that we couldn’t leave.

People speculated perhaps someone had run on the runway? Out of the windows people could see fire engines, but no fire.

Bar staff said they knew what had happened and it was serious but they couldn’t tell us.

An announcement said the airport was now closed but we had to stay where we were and couldn’t leave. A further announcement asked passengers to return their duty free!

London City has free Wi-Fi. I fired up my laptop and nothing on BBC News or Sky News: but then Twitter came to the rescue….

First entry I could find was cryptic:

“hope everyone is ok at london city”
@exatco

then they came thick and fast:

“Something odd at London City airport. All flights canceled no one allowed to leave. Talk of a crash. Website says due to “an incident”…!!!”
@burgesg

“LCY London City Airport Incident. What happened? Runway closed?!”
@interchris

Finally some clarity:

“Serious Incident at London City Airport: BA 8456 from Amsterdam landed and LCY and the front gear collapsed. Pax evacuated via slides”
@TransWorld

My own tweets were soon re-tweeting their way around Twitter too. I even got a few direct messages from people I didn’t know. One claimed to be a journalist. All very exciting.

Fellow passengers were tweeting too:

“All flights from LCY are now cancelled, but noone is allowed to leave the airport. Noone seems to know what’s going on.”
@philip_clarkson

Then the story appeared on BBC News and Sky News and soon a small crowd of people were queuing to use my laptop to look at other flight options, contact hotels or read the news reports for themselves.

In true British spirit passengers who 30 minutes earlier were looking at each other with thinly veiled looks of contempt were all chatting together, giving each other advice on how to handle travel plans and collectively wondering what had happened.

Throughout all of this there were NO official announcements form the airport as to what had actually taken place!

Free tea and coffee were obviously part of their rehearsed emergency plan as they started to serve them en mass! I opted for more alcohol but had to pay!

Then, all of a sudden, security started throwing everyone out of departures very rudely and very quickly. I had no checked in luggage so didn’t have to queue, but many people did! On the way out the police asked each passenger if they’d seen anything on the runway before they could go.

Fortunately no one was killed or seriously injured, but it did give a strange insight into how these situations are handled. I wonder if the refusal to give any information to passengers is a paranoia that giving the wrong information can result in a law suit?

All the BA staff had gone home and BA’s phone lines were closed so people had to guess at what was the best course of action. We headed off to Heathrow – others tried to book themselves into local hotels.

One thing is for sure though: as the Hudson River plane crash also proved breaking news now belongs on twitter. Forget news wires: twitter is the wire of the people!

This weekend has been a bit of a weird one.

I was supposed to go to Amsterdam but events at London City Airport conspired against us – the wheel fell off the plane we were supposed to fly out on.

A very expensive cab drive to Heathrow followed, along with an awful nights sleep. On Sat AM feeling as rough as fuck I abandoned my plans and started the trek back home. I’ve finally had some sleep but still feel very odd. I am hoping an early night tonight will sort it though as this coming week looks like another really busy one. The joyful task of trying to get my money back is on my to-do list for this week.

This week is another mad one work wise but I’ve sorted out my new flat (goodbye Islington, hello Shoreditch) and I’m really looking forward to going to Amsterdam at the weekend!

More soon! This blog will continue to be updated

So I’ve been looking at flats. This was a recent conversation that took place in a flat with an estate agent.

Me: “Yeah, I quite like it – it’s not bad. Bit overpriced?”

Them: “It’s an exceptional flat. There’s already an offer in on it.”

Me: “Oh. So it’s not available then?”

Them: “Well, a guy has put an offer in. A banker, lots of cash. Wants to move really fast. Moment he saw it he wanted it. ”

Me:  “Oh right, a banker with lots of cash? Nice to know they are still around! So you know him? He’s your client? He’s not with another agent?”

Them: “Yeah he keeps calling me. Really wants to move fast”

Me: “Right.  So would you do this to me as well? If I was to put an offer in? Show other people a flat an offers already in on? Aren’t you supposed to take it off the market? Isn’t that what it says you do on your website?”

Them: “Well, yeah, technically, but with these flats you can’t hang around, they will just go, everyone wants them. I’d put in asking price and no break clause if you want it mate”

Me: “Right.”

Them: “So yeah do you want to put an offer in?” 

Me: “Sorry, but it’s empty, no? Have I missed something? We are standing in an empty flat? And it’s on your website? And has been for a while? And I think there is one two floors up on with your competitor?  Would suggest it’s not being snapped up in minutes?”

Them: “It will go mate.  These don’t come up very often”

What is it with Estate Agents? Are they thick? Bad salesmen? Or just wankers?

I read a great article the other day about how the physcology of estate agents is totally fucked.

Of course, I forgot to bookmark it, but the jist of it was that they spend too long trying to turn a “in the right ballpark” offer into a high offer.

Because Estate Agents only get a small percentage of the asking price the actual difference into their pocket from a mid to high offer is very small.

3 “in the right ballpark” deals in quick succession are worth more to an Estate Agent than 1 big one. So they should be spending their time convincing landlords or sellers to stop losing money on an empty property and accept these lower offers rather than chasing a high value deal off a punter and wasting hours wearily showing multiple people the same flat time and time again.

More on the psychology of estate agents here:
http://www.channel4.com/4homes/buying-selling/estate-agents/the-psychology-of-estate-agents-08-05-28_p_1.html

A cab driver was telling me a similar flawed logic exists in his profession. Lots of drivers will come out until they make a set amount and go home.

Say that amount is £200 a day. Some days it might take them 8 hours, some days it might take them 16 hours.

If they make £200 in 7 hours, they race home amazed they have done so well and put their feet up. Bad move! If you’ve made it in 7 hours on one day, that is the day to stay out – by 16 hours chances are you’ve made £400.

i was intrigued by this and did some digging around online and it turns out this theory was first put forward by Cornell Professor Robert Frank in his book The Economic Naturalist: In Search of Explanations for Everyday Enigmas.

You can read an article based on it here too:
http://www.stockcentral.com/learn/blog/tabid/159/EntryID/40/language/en-US/Default.aspx

Lots of food for thought!

Whilst we’re on the subject of taxis though, I do love my conversations with cab drivers: of course some are full of shit, but amongst my many journeys I’ve spoken to cab drivers who built up multi-million pound businesses and lost it all, others who used to work for the Royal Family and even one who claimed to be the fifth Beatle. To be fair, that last one was a bit odd but he did have a Liverpudlian accent.

In my whimsical way though I do often think it must be interesting to be in a profession where you so often see little intimate snatches of other people’s lives without them really realising they are being observed.

The phone calls overheard by cab drivers, the insecurities and ramblings of couples en route to an event one of them is dreading, the last tense conversations between former cabinet ministers (or even faded 80s pop stars!) and their legal counsel as they head to court to be sentenced: I’m sure there is a book or even a film that could be made about this sort of thing one day. If I was an under cover author I think I’d spend 6 months driving a cab in a kind of George Orwell inspired mission to learn about what really goes on in London.

One for the ideas box, that.

On Tuesday I was lucky enough to see the fabulous Grace Jones @ The Roundhouse. I’ve always wanted to see Grace live: I grew up listening to her songs blare out of the bedrooms of my siblings (one of the side effects of having much older brothers and sisters is that I love a lot of music from their era!) and she didn’t disappoint.

What can I say to do this show justice? It’s hard to know where to begin.

She had stage presence that X Factor finalists or indeed most gigging acts today can only dream of.

Sure, making an entrance on a crane from above the stage helps, but Grace Jones is a genuine star. With a new outfit (and hat) for each song she personified what show business should be all about! On one song she hula hooped for 10 minutes. I’d like to see Alexandra pull that off.

An enraptured audience (with more than the usual quota of celebs), a tight as you like band (which includes her Son), simple, but highly effective staging. And a wind machine that almost took off.

Oh, and she can sing. Boy can she sing!

Hearing La Vie en Rose and Slave to the Rhythm live made sure I left the venue grinning from ear to ear. I can’t wait to see her live again. Apparently she’s playing the Montreux Jazz Festival which is a bit of an annual destination for me, so I’m going to be sorting out my flights very soon!

If you get to see her live, do. You’ll leave a fan even if you weren’t before.

Here’s a bit of La Vie en Rose, complete with top hat, tails, wind machine and pole dancing pole:

A nice round up of footage from Wednesday’s show here:

And here is Grace on Later… earlier this year performing the Trevor Horn produced masterpiece Slave to the Rhythm.

Not bad for a woman of 60 eh?

A true Icon and a true talent in an era of pretenders to the throne!

Forgot to post that the OpenSoho3 video is up here:
http://www.boringlondon.com