There is a drawer in the studio with maybe forty sheets in it that I have owned for over a decade and will never cut. Old endpapers from a bookbinding job, a few sheets of Swedish marbled paper from the fifties, one piece of Japanese tissue so thin it behaves like a rumour. I take them out maybe twice a year, look at them, put them back.

It is not sentiment exactly. They are simply too good to spend on an arrangement that is not good enough for them, and no arrangement ever is. So they sit there being perfect and useless.

Meanwhile the things I actually finish are made of the torn-up envelope backs and the water-damaged hymnal nobody wanted. Which is fine. That is the work. But I have started to wonder whether the drawer is a stash or an excuse. Keeping the good stuff intact means I never have to find out that my best paper would not save a bad composition.

Anyone else hoarding something they know perfectly well they will die owning? Or is this just me being a coward with a nice drawer.