THE DIARIES OF PAUL K LYONS - 1979
Having given up the idea of a professional career in market research, I spent three months writing a play about Aleister Crowley. I was also experimenting with longer forms of fictional writing. However, because I lost the tenancy of my cheap and spacious flat in Kilburn, I started to become unsettled. My Kilburn flatmates and I moved to a flat in Leytonstone, but I never liked it or planned to stay.
During the year, I became involved with a fantastic theatre company called Phantom Captain, and worked with it at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, helping to stage manage and to perform ‘Waiter Service’ gigs. That same summer, I met Bel. By late autumn, I was very unhappy in Leyton, and decided to spend the winter alone in Corsica to focus on writing. It seems bizarre, looking back, that my uncomplicated, sexual involvement with three beautiful women at the time didn’t mitigate against my leaving the country - none of the three relationships flourished following my return in 1980.
Diary 11 begins at the start of the year, while Diary 12 starts on my birthday, 28 May, and continues through to October. I began a new journal, Diary 13, for my Corsica venture, and this covers November and December 1979 and January 1980. After that, in February and March 1980, I returned to finish off Diary 12. My writing in this period loses some of its pretentious floweriness, although I’ve still had to edit it quite heavily (not least by removing incomprehensible poems) for various reasons.
Paul K. Lyons (September 2007)