Fifty Years On: Friday, 30th July 1976
Grandpa wakes me early, although not deliberately. The kitchen is directly below my bedroom, and just the sound of him putting the kettle on is enough. He’d never shout upstairs. By the time I’d stirred, he’d probably be out in the garage already, servicing the old two-stroke lawn mower or the Flymo, or fixing the chain on my bike. We got on well. He was one of those men who quietly got on with useful things.
I retreat to my sister’s room at the far end of the corridor, as far from the kitchen as possible. She’s still in Appleby, so I manage another hour or so of sleep.
Eventually I get up and begin copying an old novel I’d been trying to write. Before long I’ve more or less completely changed it. Looking back, this is probably the first time I discover rewriting, although I have no philosophy behind it. New ideas simply keep arriving, each one replacing the last. Instead of polishing a story, I breed new versions of it, like strawberry plants sending out runners. They aren’t improvements so much as parallel lives. The original disappears beneath them.
It is science fiction. Naturally the hero is me, a teenage boy who is going to save the world and get the girl. No surprises there.
I do the cat’s ears. I think it must have been medication. My sister had recently acquired a kitten, although we didn’t keep it for long.
After lunch I catch the No. 45 bus into Newcastle and go to Windows. It is an odd place: classical instruments on the ground floor, while the basement is given over to records and sheet music. I buy Band on the Run by Wings, 24 Carat Purple by Deep Purple, and another record-cleaning cloth. My taste is already hopelessly eclectic, happy to move from melodic pop to heavy metal without seeing any contradiction.
The cleaning cloth is part of the ritual. Before almost every record I brush away the dust, lower the stylus carefully, and wait for the music to begin. Owning records feels like a responsibility as much as a pleasure.
Back home I defrost whatever Mum has left for supper. Then I rewrite the first page of my story. This time it comes quickly. Ironically, I now realise this habit of endless revision would become one of my greatest obstacles as a writer. More often than not I’d rewrite a story until I’d drained the life out of it rather than finishing it.
I play with the cat, have a bath, then watch television until I fall asleep.
I see the irony in this entry. Downstairs, grandoa spends his morning maintaining machines so they continue to work as intended. Upstairs, I spend my day maintaining a story until it becomes something else entirely. Both are acts of repair, but one preserves while the other transforms.
The contrast recalls Nabokov’s delight in endless refinement, but it also exposes its danger. Knausgård often allows scenes to remain imperfect because completion matters more than polish. My instinct, at sixteen, was different. I am less interested in finishing than in discovering what the story might become next. That curiosity is a strength, but it also hints at the perfectionism that would shadow so many later creative projects.
The teenage diarist records an ordinary summer day; the older writer can recognise the birth of a lifelong creative pattern.
I wonder if I enjoyed the act of typing the most, and that’s all I wanted to do; I might as well have been writing gibberish.
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