The art director at mid 1990s skateboard title Sidewalk Magazine, Andy Horsely came up with this simple yet brilliant idea for the cover of issue 22.

We’d get Paul Shier who was a really good friend of the ours at the magazine to grind block of ice.

Somebody somehow found an ice merchant halfway between Oxford, where the magazine was located, and Croydon, where Paul lived at the time.

I’ve no idea how that happened before search engines on the internet. Maybe a thing called ‘Yellow Pages’ was utlised? I don’t know.

Anyhow, plans were made and times were set. We ordered three blocks of ice and the ice company were ‘cool’ enough to let us use the delivery bay out front to do the shoot.

After a few runs, Paul had got used to the idea of grinding on ice and we broke up one of the blocks and put it all round the other one we were using. That even took some effort as it was a cold October day.

I am truly blessed that I’ve been able to work with all these incredible talented people throughout the years and I’m still so happy with this picture all these years later.

My memory of this is that it happened on a Friday afternoon for some reason. Maybe that was just the party atmosphere in the car on the way home?

This original slide of this picture was used as part of No Comply at Somerset House in Summer 2021.