This was enormous. For an illustration drawn in ink. Bigger than Tracy Emin's 'Iconic' unmade bed. Bigger than Shoreham By Sea's aerodrome. Bigger than Shoreham By Sea. Had an aircraft to itself. In fact this was the aircraft. It glided across the pond to Entertainment Weekly magazine in New York. Across the Atlantic Ocean. Ink and watercolour and a stamp. Non - porno. No commercial value. Protected. Wrapped in layers of stiff cardboard. Strapped with reels of gaffa tape. Sealed with wax. Sealed with glue. Transported to America. A shadow over Greenland. Newfoundland. Bigger than a flying fortress. In 1997. Big. Too big for the studio. Courier couldn't stick it under his arm. Impossible to fold. It took hours just to build an envelope to put it in. Label it Fragile. Before the scanner. Took it to Ron the printer in the high street to photocopy it in twenty six parts. Ron would out moan me for the gold medal. Probably fed the fax machine to show the art editor it's progress in instalments. Two rolls of fax paper. I took a polaroid of Elton John singing Candle in the wind at Princess Diana's funeral on the television for reference. Didn't get paid as much for it as Tracy Emin's 'Iconic' unmade bed. The original piece now hangs on a wall near Preston in Lancashire. Had to demolish the lobby to get it in position. Diversions on the A59. Had to close the country lanes to traffic to transport it to it's new home. Near The Inn at Whitewell. In the Ribble Valley Lancashire. In England. That was the nineties. Since 2005 when I converted to digital, it's all digital delivery. It's all memory stick, no fragile labels to stick. A59? It's all less than A3. If I had any work. That's history. Bye gone days. Anyone for golf. Anyone live in the East? Fancy a weekly walk, chasing a little white ball with a set of sticks. Putting the little white ball into a hole eighteen times. Handicap? I was an illustrator.
