If this is something that The Ice Co has taken proactive steps to address – all its ice is now made using green energy, all packaging is 100% recyclable and plastic use has been reduced 40% in the past two years – other events in the industry remain beyond their control. Competitors' attempts at market consolidation are a constant risk. In 2018, the private equity-backed Procubitos Europe group was formed out of a merger between the two largest packaged-ice manufacturers in Spain; after adding the largest Italian player, Polo Nord, to the portfolio, the group now owns packaged ice in Germany, too, right on the fringes of The Ice Co's dominion.

Consumer tastes remain fickle: following the gin-and-tonic boom, there is now talk of the non-alcoholic spirits explosion, the dawn of tequila and soda, the emerging craft rum supremacy. The specifics of these trends are meaningless. The only thing that matters for an ice-maker is how those drinks are served, and how the people who need ice for them get hold of it.

There might be grounds for cautious optimism in the general pandemic-induced shift towards online retail (always a bonus with a product as bulky and unpleasant to carry as packaged ice), but like generations of Marrs before her, Polly Metcalfe can only hope to remain vigilant, in the hope that she and her team are able to provide the market with frozen water in whatever form the market dictates.

"We're always looking out – we don't want to be left behind," she noted, and for an MD in a different industry, that might scan as a perfectly acceptable platitude.

Ice, though, is different. And The Ice Co is not just the company that makes ice; it is also the company that ice made. As 200 years of modern ice-trade history have taught us, we would do well not to overlook the things too apparently uninteresting to merit our attention. The evidence of the cubes melting in your glass suggests that it is the world that changes ice. But ice has changed the world, too.