Barely made broken cone ollie...my first performance for the camera and I was feeling the pressure!
Image courtesy of amateur photographer (and then school bus driver) Dave Bell (who sadly died of cancer a few years later).
RIP Dave and thanks for choosing me as your ‘guinea pig’ for testing your new camera :)
Perfect 360 kickflip over one of the flowerbeds in the sheridan centre during the summer of '96.
This was such a fun little place to skate but unfortunately, less than a year later, the flowerbeds would be removed as part of the council's seeming commitment to making the town increasingly bland and boring (and boy, oh boy, did they succeed on that front).
Alternate 360 kickflip view over the soon to be removed sheridan centre flowerbed.
There were so many great lines that went down there and it's just too bad that some of those sessions weren't caught on video.
Photograph courtesy of fellow skateboarder Paul Hemming.
Floating over the flowerbed halfway through a backside 180 ollie (and yes....I made it!)
Fellow skateboarder Paul Heywood looking on in the background.
Totally failed backside 180 kickflip...
Meeting freestyle pioneer and skateboarding legend Rodney Mullen at the A-Team demo in rock city skatepark Hull.
Hands down one of the nicest, humblest and friendliest people you could ever wish to meet. For someone who practically invented modern street skateboarding there was literally ZERO ego. Talking with Rodney felt like you were talking with an old friend who you hadn't seen in a long time.
Such a seriously great guy.
This would be my last full year of skateboarding. I was starting to fall out of love with an activity that had strongly defined my teenage years and the increasingly immature, shallow and clique mindset/behaviour of the skateboarding community was wearing very thin (particularly the drug use and sycophantic 'worship' of local pro skater Scott Palmer [who although good was nowhere near the unassailable hero that many local skateboarders painted him to be]).
Totally random switch noseslide (on a borrowed skateboard from a nearby skater) at the Tidal barrier Hull.
Hadn't set foot on a skateboard in a number of years so I was surprised I could still pull this off.
14 years away from the one activity that defined my teenage years and still able to clear curb islands with a kickflip....and on my first try too - not bad for an old-timer! :D
More to follow?
I'll let father time decide...