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Toby’s introduction
to a fragment of
Mick’s
work-in-progress, from 1992.
There are two strands to Mick’s writing that he was working on weaving together. It may be important to know a little of these two aspects in order to understand some of the references in this fragment of his text called All Day Breakfast Volume IV.
For many years Mick had kept a diary, and he had also
planned to write a
novel.
In September 1982 he appears to have had a strange experience. He was unsure what to make of it and offered various interpretations, to both himself and others, at different times.
It is impossible for us to know what exactly happened in that house that night, but a short version would be that he sat down to write his diary, suffered a blackout, found himself zooming towards a lattice of light and realising that if he passed through it he would not return. Coming round with his head on his arms, he looked up to find two characters standing there before him. He was extremely startled, but engaged them in conversation, in a long session during which he also played lots of different records, and then returned to consensus reality confused, with indecipherable notes, and the feeling that he had a good idea for a novel.
The Two themselves offered various explanations of their
presence, from being time-travellers to being the characters from a book he
would begin and leave unfinished...
By 1983 he was developing the form of his diary, both as a way of elucidating and digesting what had happened to him, and as a navigational aid into the future (the future in which he maybe had to write a book with a happy ending and release the characters).
By the Christmas of 1984 he had worked out a way to write a diary that satisfied him, and that he wanted others to try. He formed a Society for diarists, and gave Toby a ‘Dynamic Diary’ which included instructions on writing up your own life as if you were living in a story, and could perhaps affect the outcome of the story by your actions within it.
It was still rather confusing and confused, but Toby tried the experiment, and it was certainly interesting Not only did it keep him writing, and writing a diary even, but gave him an interesting way of watching the world around him, and the days passing. Phases of life became chapters, and later, volumes.
By September 1985 Mick had a synopsis for his
book, which he called ‘Working Out’ - referring both to working out
the puzzle of
consciousness, (and particularly his strange
experience/dream/hallucination/psychic event/contact with aliens/reincarnational
memory - whatever...) and to his self-employed country life, a man for all
seasons, a craftsman.
By February 1986 he was circulating papers on Peer Group Enterprises, offering his current model of time, some further details of the event he had experienced in fictional form, which included the idea that he (or rather the protagonist) had possibly died.
He was involved in organising a juggling convention in a castle in Spain, and travelled with Toby for three months, in love with bar life, Islamic mosaics, gypsies, sunshine, cheap pensions and travel.