I write, going back further, invoking the past precisely because it is irretrievable.
He could not supply raw data for the three problematic experiments; they had been stored on a computer at his home that had crashed in September 2011 and whose data his brother-in-law had assured him were irretrievable.
"Without the private funding and support of many private individuals and institutions up and down the country the situation that I describe would be so much worse, in fact in many ways it would be irretrievable".
"It's not irretrievable," said Dan Schnur, director of the Jesse M. Unruh Institute of Politics at USC's College of Letters, Arts and Sciences.
The whole thing is a mess and, at the heart of it, the damage to Allardyce's professional reputation is irretrievable.
One crumpled signal dish was judged to be irretrievable; we detached it and let it spin off, down toward the minefield.
What's changed is that the world moves far faster now, and squandered moments, even Japan's lost decade, may be irretrievable.
For decades, the received wisdom has been that the original fourth act was irretrievable, its music lost.
He was also dissatisfied with Moody's role and it quickly became apparent during his talks with Parish that the damage was irretrievable.
