Jordan Thackeray of Colchester

Sox: What about Mexico and Japan?

I’ve never been to Mexico in my life.

Sox: Oh sorry, I meant Brazil. [laughing]

Stu: Cause you missed the flight?

No, I’ve just never been. I only missed two flights in my life. One was due to bus traffic and the other one was because I didn’t check my boarding pass properly. I actually had two tickets cause it was a connection flight, and I just read the later one and thought I had loads of time… It was me, Skinny [Daniel Hill], and Zak [Lucas], we all missed our flights from the Basque Country.

Jackson: Ah, Bilbao. Skinny came to the airport and couldn’t get his boarding pass working on his phone. He went to the desk and found out that his flight had been at seven in the morning, so he just chilled with us. I made the same mistake he did, and then Zach tried to get his Megabus for the airport and the bus never turned up. It stopped somewhere else. So we ended up just having a really nice day at the beach, swimming with some of the locals.

Stu: That right there is your attitude that carries you through. For a lot of people, that would’ve been really stressful, but for you it’s like, “Well this happened, so let’s chill with our mates and something will work out.”

I once broke your balls with a massive flight problem. I hadn’t booked my flight to Japan yet and I had Sox and Toby [Gozzett] meeting me there to travel a month around Japan, camping and filming. Just after the Team Trouble in Laax, I was in Belgium and still hadn’t booked it.

Stu: So you came to me, three hours before the flight that the other guys were on. You had no stuff…

I just came from Belgium. Ben had taken me in his fire truck, then I took the Megabus to London, and went straight into the studio, where you were on your MacBook, trying to find a flight. I ended up spending £1,200 and had to leave the studio and get straight to Heathrow.

Stu: Yeah, that was pretty stressful.

I was pretty sure that I was gonna get on the flight but still ended up missing it by about 15 minutes. But then I got there and the guy was like, “Maybe we can help you.” He found out that British Airways partnered with Japan Airlines, and because of that, he was able to put me on a flight within two hours. However, then I had weight issues with my baggage, but it was only £40 extra. He connected me to the right place in Japan to get my connection flight to Hiroshima. The one you booked for me would’ve taken me three hours from one airport to another, so I would’ve probably missed that. In the end, it was actually better that I missed my flight.

Maité: You’re missing a lot of flights, but you’re always getting to the right destination. [everybody is laughing]

Stu: It’s pretty amazing, the amount of times you’ve been here and said, “I’ve got to get my bus at Victoria in 40 minutes.” And I’m like, “Well, I don’t know…” That separates the way I think from the way you think, and I wish I’d think the way you do.

Sox: But sometimes he’s wrong. [laughing] Never forget that one time you smoked a cigarette in Sweden, when we were going back to Denmark and the train left in five minutes. Then Jordan’s like, “There’s time for one more cigarette.” And I’m like, “There’s no time for another fucking cigarette.” But Jordan thought there’s plenty, so we went up and I was standing in the elevator, keeping the door open, telling him we need to go. Then the train comes, pulls off, and we were nowhere near.

Then we came down with the elevator and I’m like, “Fuck, we didn’t have time…”

Stu: The other day, Sol said that Jordan said, “I’m gonna get chips” and then you, Jackson, said, “No, we’re gonna miss our bus!” and you just stormed off. First, Sol thought, “Why are you like this?” But you’ve been down that road too many times.

Jackson: I had to get home.

The chips shopping took like 20 minutes…

Maité: I was there too. I also missed it. [laughing]

Stu: Sol then was like, “Jackson really knew what he was talking about.” [everybody laughing] I’ve said to myself a million times, “Don’t be uptight.” On a trip or something when I’m pushing to be on time while everyone else generally is pretty slack. Especially you and Hallford.

I’m glad you’re bringing Hallford into it. The thing with Alex is, he’s quite calculated. He’ll be like, “It’ll take me 15 minutes to pack and get to the bus. So fuck it, I’ll do what I want.”

Stu: Well, the result is often the same, but if you’re fluid and miss the bus and just take the next one and somehow get free lunch till it arrives… It somehow works out like that.

Sox: That was actually how we got here cause everyone had bikes besides us. Then we didn’t do anything about it and just kept on skating, and all of a sudden, Jackson was home from work on the way to exactly the same place we were going.

One of the funniest train station memories is me and Sox trying to bunk the last train home from Roskilde, and we got caught right away by the ticket inspector. We had to buy tickets or get off the train and we asked her if it’s the last train, but she said, “I’m definitely not gonna tell you,” kicked us out, and took our bikes off the train. We then thought we’ll bike to Copenhagen. It was just a 20-minute train journey. We were looking at the lights in the distance, which were the lights of the city – in our heads. We cycled for like an hour or something and were pretty sure we’re getting closer, and then suddenly, we arrived at the same station we left from but from behind. [everybody laughing]

Stu: Then there was another train?

No, we ended up sleeping there.

Sox: It was a good rough night.

In the morning, we took the first train. We didn’t get caught even though the woman did catch us in the VIP. We were like, “We were up all night” and she said, “Well, buy your tickets next time.”

Sox: She let us have it. We had turned up at the Roskilde Festival before with nothing, but Albert [Hatchwell] gave us loads of papers, bottles of wine, and sunglasses. You had a wristband to skate the competition there.

Yeah, we got there without anything. We walked to the festival and saw a lot of bikes. The first one I looked at had the key in the lock and the other one had the code on the bike lock and wasn’t even locked up. So we had two bikes and went to the booth where you get the wristbands and took all the free drinks from the fridge, even though they told us it’s one per person.

Stu: You can’t put a limit on free beers!

Sox: The first night, we didn’t have a tent or anything and ended up sleeping on a couch in the middle of the festival. We cuddled to keep warm.

Stu: But you can turn up to a festival with nothing, get free drinks and a sofa to sleep.

By the time we left, I think Sox had made £200 from the cans we were collecting.

Sox: Even more, I made like £400.

And I found a fresh pair of Dre Beats.

Sox: We could sleep in James’s tent, we made friends…

…I had a new pair of shoes.

Sox: We also met the switch witch Lili. She was carving around the skatepark just wearing a gilet. We met her at a street dance workshop. [laughing]

That was a great event.

Stu: I think I need to be more like that. Do you ever get stressed out by stuff like that?

Sox: It will work out because if it’s not working out, it changes and then it works out.

When it doesn’t really matter with how rough it gets with this sort of shit, you just gonna be, “At least I’m not dead or at least I’m not an insect.”

Sox: Good things will happen to you if you have a good mentality about it, and bad things will happen if you have a bad mentality.

Manifestation.

Sox: That’s how you end up missing flights and get on better ones.

A lot of the times, not being stressed comes with someone else’s stress expanding, like Stu buying the flight. When me and Jake [Collins] went to Marseille, we had a mad one for a week. Then we went to go back and Sox and Marin dropped us at the airport after the most intense car journey of my life. She drove like a nutter. When they picked us up, she said, “I don’t know how much fuel I have in the tank.” In the middle of the city, there were no gas stations. Then she cut through multi-story car parks to get through different roads that were full of traffic. On the motorway, Sox had to grab the steering wheel cause there was a bump in the middle of the road and she was gonna run it over. As soon as they left from the airport, we realized that EasyJet had gone on strike… So I was like, “Sick, I can stay in France for another week.” But Jake was like, “Fuck, I have no money and there’s nothing I can do about it!” He ended up taking up a Wonga loan to get back alone and Pauli gave me £40 and it was the sickest week of our life. We just went to different places that had crazy spots to skate.

Sox: Especially when traveling to comps, it’s always good to stay a bit longer. It feels more real.

Maité: Let’s talk about the mushroom picking you did a few days ago.

Not much to say about it. It’s the season. We went to a top secret location and it’s pretty hard to tell which ones are good. There are so many that look similar. Griff struggled a bit, but once he got going, he found quite a few. I don’t know much about mushroom picking though. Sam Beckett is the one to ask.

Sox: How many tricks that haven’t been done before are you thinking about on a normal day?

I think about multiple tricks each day. I once had a weird dream about a backside boneless backside shove it in. I was so certain that it’ll work and then I went to try it in real life and found out that it’s actually fucked. I like to link tricks that I’ve already known, combos like in Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater.

Griff: It’s hard to take pictures.

I’m definitely a photographer’s worst nightmare. I have to do five to ten tricks in front of it to get my head in the right place to even try to stick the trick. If it’s easy or hard, it seems like it doesn’t matter.

Griff: Do you feel like you have to get in a certain headspace if you’re trying stuff?

It’s like a Rubik’s cube of your own brain. Like, I was so close to just doing it and now that feeling is just gone. How do I get it back? And then I just add another trick to the line. It’s definitely not good for a photographer to sit down for an hour, watching you trying a line before you even get close to the trick you’re trying. I definitely have commitment issues.

Griff: That front blunt the other day, I put my camera down and was just chilling cause I kinda forgot that I was here to take a photo. Then I saw you doing a 270 noseblunt and thought, “Shit, he’s coming.”

Maité: Which trick again?

It was a front blunt on a vert wall. Really scary, but when I did it, it felt really chilling. When I land it, I’m always like, “Why was I shitting myself?” I think that’s something a lot of people suffer from.

[a little pause, Stu is leaving]

Sox: What does the future hold for Jordan Thackeray?

I turn 25 and will be closer to 30 than to 20. That’s fucked. Hopefully, I’m driving in the future. That would help a lot logistically and I could be a more useful human being.

Jackson: Which whip you gonna get?

A really cheap one. [laughing] Also, I want to learn a bit more about other stuff than skating.

Maité: How’s banjo going?

It’s going great.

Maité: Form a country band.

I actually got asked to be in a band the other day, but I’m definitely not reliable enough. With the banjo, it’s the same as with skating, I’m still not happy with it, but it’s coming along. Skating definitely helped me a lot, it will be the same with everything I learn, it’s muscle-memory-based. Skating teaches you how to learn stuff.

Sox: I think breakdancing really helped your skateboarding.

Maybe. During the time I couldn’t skate, I spent a lot of time breakdancing and yo-yoing. I was 12 or 13 and breakdanced for like six months. I still got the windmill.

Griff: You should do it here in the miniramp.

Nah, we should skate the miniramp now.