THE DIARIES OF PAUL K LYONS - 1992
In 1992, I enjoyed a certain amount of success with the EC energy policies book and the East Europe newsletter, and I wrote more fictional material than I had done in several years - including a play for children called ‘King Top-of-the-World’. I took an unprecedented number of holidays - in Dorset, Pembrokeshire, Lake District, France, Spain, and Portugal - some alone (including a rather unusual week on an Outward Bound course), some with Adam, and some with Barbara and Adam. Early in the year, Adam began his school life, at St Bartholomew’s; and later in the year Barbara completed her degree course.
But it was also a year of anxiety as, at the age of 40, I tried to find a new way forward in my working life. First there was the idea of starting my own business, then the chance of becoming editor-in-chief at FT Newsletters, then, and on failing to win that appointment, I tried to negotiate buying one or more of the newsletters for which I was editor. I was particularly keen on buying ‘EC Energy Monthly’, which had been so completely my idea I felt sure the FT would be uninterested in keeping it on without me. How naive was I? - management’s price was well beyond my funds. The atmosphere at FT Newsletters during this time was far from positive or supportive, and my last days at the company, after I'd resigned, were horrible.
By year’s end I was ready to launch my own company (EC Inform) and a new newsletter (‘EC Inform-Energy’) the day after my legal employment with the FT ended. The fact that I had been obliged to rent the Brussels flat off the FT’s books, so to speak, meant that I was well placed to maintain it, and my thus journalist status (with press pass) in Brussels.
During my trip to Portugal with Adam, I kept a holiday diary (Diary 47 - not transcribed) - this was the first time I had reverted to hand writing a diary since the switch (in late 1989) to typing diary entries straight into a computer. It is the earliest diary - chronologically speaking - that I have not transcribed to the computer, and its contents are thus absent from this net-published edition of my diaries. (Diaries 46, 48)
Paul K. Lyons (January 2016)