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During the summer of ’89 I spent most of my days hanging around with Andrew who was a year older than myself and whose mother had been friends with my mother for the past decade or so.

We’d often go skateboarding together and I remember being drawn to him as he seemed more alive and exciting to be around than many of the other children in the neighbourhood. His crazy stories filled with larger-than-life exploits and some of the antics we got up to fed my need for friendship and connection at that age...

It’s strange how certain memories that seem insignificant in terms of the events they represent manage to stay with you and strike a chord even decades later.

I can’t remember too much about Mr Smith now. I have a vague picture in my mind of what he looked like but I can recall that he was a kindly gentleman of a bygone era who was bespectacled, retired and lived with his wife a couple of doors down the street from my friend at-the-time Andrew..

Even decades after the event one of my major regrets is that of the 11 or so years that I spent immersed in the skateboarding sub-culture that I have lamentably few photographs (and video footage) from that era.

When I think of some of the sessions that took place in locations such as Tesco’s multi-storey car park, the flowerbeds in the Sheridan centre and the banks and various urban furniture of the local park it burns me to know that they almost entirely exist only as memories now. Even more so when those locations have been erased from existence since the passing of the 90’s.

Those switch ollies over the tall iron bollards outside the front of Sainsbury’s. The ollie over the large seesaw in the town park. The backside 180 back foot kickflip down the park banks. The 360 kick flips over the raised flowerbeds in the Sheridan Centre. Various lines up, down and across the banks in the park...