THE DIARIES OF PAUL K LYONS - 1982

An active, busy, more stable year - lots of people, lots of culture, lots of travels. I was still working for the trade magazine ‘European Chemical News’ and commuting to Sutton every day from Kilburn (half by bike, half by train). I travelled around a lot, discovering Antibes (where my stepfather had a flat), and Aldeburgh, where friends lived. I also visited Monte Carlo, Oslo, Bergen, Vienna, Ljubljana, and I went to New York again where I fell out irretrievably with my father Fred (having only fallen in with him the year before). But I had plenty of other, positive experiences in the Big Apple. Through the year several friendships developed, not least that with Bel.

I wrote about the January trip to Vienna and Slovakia (still Yugoslavia at the time) in a typical shorthand notebook. Until recently, I didn’t realise the notebook existed (and, therefore, that it needed to be considered one of my journals). Rather than renumbering all the other journals, I’ve called it Diary 17.5. Diaries 18 and 19 cover all the rest of 1982, except for the weeks I spent in New York for which I kept a separate journal (Diary 20).

Paul K. Lyons (September 2007)