THE DIARIES OF PAUL K LYONS - 2002
A palindrome year, the last for more than 100 years to come, and a very significant year for me, though only in largely negative ways. I felt I was on the way down, psychologically speaking, and there was little I could do to avoid a crash.
The first of January saw the introduction of the Euro across most of Europe, it also saw me making, finally, a decision to cease publishing my two newsletters in December and to close down EC Inform - a decision that needed to be taken so far in advance in order to inform subscribers and adjust their invoices accordingly. I took my last trip to Brussels in November, by car, clearing out the rented flat, dumping some stuff and bringing the rest back to the UK. Apart from EC Inform, I continued intermittently to work on Kip Fenn.
In May, I organised a party - having not had one for 20 years perhaps - to celebrate my 50th birthday. Never before had I mixed family and friends, and I did it now more as a duty to myself, a reality check to show myself how socially isolated I had become. I wrote: ‘This will not be a young man’s wild party, but a mild gathering of a middle-aged man’s few friends.’ Although I had hoped to draw a few old friends (most of whom I hadn’t seen for decades) from abroad, only one came. The gathering felt like a symbolic moment - it was all my life had come to. And symbolic too was the fact that I was hobbling around on crutches, having fallen and twisted my knee very badly, a few weeks earlier, playing volleyball. In June, I had an arthroscopy, but the knee continued to trouble me for the rest of the year, and, very boringly, fill up many pages in the diary.
Email dating dialogues also continued to occupy me, and my diary entries. I found that I loved writing to strangers, finding out about them. Once or twice, I let hope of a relationship get the better of me, and was sorely disappointed on real world meetings.
Otherwise, Adam and I had a week skiing in the Pyrenees in Feb (Diary 67 - not transcrib-ed), and a nostalgic few days visit to Aldeburgh in the autumn. The year ended on a small high when all my family gathered for an xmas celebration at Russet House - I called it Dobostorte Day, D-Day, because I spent many hours making a dobostorte cake. This was in memory of my grandmother who, when I was young, always used to make me one for my birthday. (Diaries 70, 71, 72)
Paul K. Lyons (November 2017)