Most of the names in this year’s diary have been changed. Paddy wasn’t Paddy, landlady Barbora wasn’t Barbora, and first love (sort of) Veronika wasn’t Veronika.

I thought it easier to make just about everyone unidentifiable, rather than try and track them down to get permission.

No-one here’s portrayed doing anything that disreputable. And, I’m afraid, with the majority, we’re no longer in contact.

Paddy, however, remains my best friend.

In case you were wondering, the Angličtina Expres Czech-English Dictionary was never completed.

Staging by the Quay Brothers, a later and continuing obsession of Toby’s.

I have no idea how he heard of this production. Perhaps Paddy took him along.

It was notable for the use of scratchcards. At certain moments, a letter was projected above the stage, and the audience scratched that silver patch and smelled — dusty cobwebs, for example.

Prokofiev, like Rachmanilov, has a tendency to give Toby an instaheadache. But he enjoys this night, this scenery.

Later on, young-Toby will develop the desire to write the words for an opera. This will be prompted by seeing Thomas Adès’ ‘The Tempest’ at the Royal Opera House. Rather than set Shakespeare, as Benjamin Britten did for ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’, Adès will opt for a new, couplety, flatpack libretto by Meredith Oakes. Young-Toby, arrogantly, will be sure he could do better.

He’ll end up joining a Jerwood opera-writing residency at Snape Maltings, Suffolk, and then writing a full-length libretto for the Canadian composer Sami Moussa — Vastation, premiered at the Munich Biennale in 2014. And he’ll realise writing a successful libretto, not flatpack, is one of the most difficult things a writer can do.

He would still like another try.

To go back to Praha, thank God. To get away from Ampthill and stagnation and not living. That’s how young-Toby sees it at the time.

Only reading is living, because not a lot of writing (which is most of living) is possible. It’s too necessary to be present, downstairs, as part of the family.

Young-Toby can, however, print out a full draft of his first novel, the novel he has completed this year, in Glasgow and Praha — The Lost Notebook of Babel. Unpublished; not going to be published.

The following year, 1991, he will send the novel to the publisher who is top of his short list, Penguin. It will make it out of the slush pile, and a young editorial assistant, Sally Abbey, will send him a letter:

‘Firstly, I would like to say how very much I like the way you write and how it stood out from the vast majority of fiction I received. It showed a self-confidence which is very unusual in a first novel. However I must confess to being somewhat puzzled by the aim of the work and what you are trying to do with it as a novel.’ There followed a page of detailed criticism and suggestions for emendation. Then ‘Should you decide to take note of these comments and resubmit The Lost Notebook of Babel in a revised form then I would be more than happy to reconsider it. If, however, you decide not to rework the novel I do ask you to keep in touch and to let us see anything new.’ I read the letter at Barbora’s. “Toby,” she said, “you are nervous… I’ve never seen you like this.”

Nervous? Ecstatic. Transformed. Full of hope.

Some of this next year will be spent rewriting the novel, according to Sally Abbey’s letter.

Young-Toby will assume getting published is this easy: first submission, first encouragement, first acceptance.

But it won’t be until four years later that a different publisher says yes.

Meanwhile, young-Toby will have written and rewritten three and a half more novels, and a collection of short stories.

His work rate and work ethic began this year. This year he learned to be a writer.

That’s why I’ve thought it worth sharing.