With the date for my exhibition only weeks away now, I finally made it into the loft to look for long lost and forgotten illustrations from my record cover days. God it’s dusty up there - cobwebs hanging from every rafter and beam and all manner of dust and debris that has blown in under the eaves and dropped through the cracks in the planking that support the tiles. But at least it looked dry and sound and offered up a few surprises.

As suspected there were things that I half expected to find, some which I hoped to find but didn’t and others discovered that had completely faded from my memory. I can only assume that the items that weren’t there had fallen victim to some earlier cull during one of my occasional but ruthless turnouts. A large and battered folio from my earliest art college days was not there as I had imagined. A pity, as I have a dim and distant recollection of it containing a few original pieces of work from my days at Decca Records. I‘d obviously decided that I’d hung onto the stuff for long enough and it was no longer of any worth, hidden away, obsolete, outmoded and passed its prime. Wrong! Rather than all those things, it was buried treasure just waiting to be rediscovered. Or it would have been if I’d only I hadn’t dumped it. But what’s gone is… gone. Real gone.

Thankful for rediscovering the pieces I did decide to keep I set about cleaning, repairing and tidying up those that hadn't fared too well during their time in dark attic obscurity. Once they were buffed up, window mounted behind clean crisp card and framed, they turned out not half bad. I was particularly pleased to find the artwork for a leaflet I’d designed and illustrated during my time at EMI Records, advertising the Beatles back catalogue and post Beatle solo albums. It needs a bit of work, but scanned in and with some photoshop work to remove various stains and surface damage it should come up a treat. If so I’ll get a digital print done and frame it. Seeing it again, especially the illustrations, I recalled drawing each one as if it were not quite Yes-ter-day (when my troubles seemed so far away) – more like the day before Yes-ter-day (when my troubles seemed slightly further away).