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By Root 1045 0

to cheer the day up, I drove over and looked through Drew Smiths1 black and white stills from the film, and selected a batch. Then up to the Angel at Highgate to meet Graham. As at the Monarch, Graham has developed an almost familial relationship with the people who run the pub, which makes for a very pleasant atmosphere and nearly always a free drink. I looked through the work on the ‘Michael Ellis’ script which G and I had worked on together. Some good ideas there – and it made me laugh. Also made me aware of the usefulness of co-writing, after my euphoria of the morning! There are just jokes and ideas in the Michael Ellis script which I would never have made as funny if I had been writing it on my own.

Came back to find Thomas not well and asleep under a rug on the sofa. Willy, quite disconcerted by this, was trying hard to feel ill himself, and lay, rather unconvincingly, on the other sofa, under a blanket.

I took W swimming in the end. We spent an hour there. W is a real joy to take around. He talks to everybody, especially men in showers, and gives complete strangers a running commentary on the progress of his latest wee, and how Daddy is wearing trunks, etc.

Thursday, July 11th

Writing with Graham. Started about 11.00, worked until 12.45 then off to the Angel; drank a v. good pint of ale, played a couple of games of bar billiards with Graham, talked, and tried to avoid eating until 2.30. Started work at 3.00 – Graham took a little time to get upstairs and, when he eventually joined me, he muttered happily that ‘These French cleaners are so passionate’.

Graham is a very good person to write dialogue with, and has very good silly ideas, but there is a rather uncomfortably undisciplined feeling to the day’s work. We manage about two hours in the morning, before he starts getting really fidgety, then two more hours in the afternoon. Whereas Terry and myself, when we have a full day’s writing, put in about six and a half solid hours.

Anyway, at 5.35 I remember I have a tutorial with Mr Cammillieri and, going against the rush-hour traffic, make Highgate to Soho Square in 15 minutes. An interesting tutorial. He just spoke Italian to me, but we at least got on to interesting topics. He said he was surprised I was an actor, but not surprised I was a writer. Perché? Well, all the actors he has met are self-centred, constantly play-acting and not genuine. Feel flattered, I suppose.

Sunday, July 14th

My mother rang to say that Father has started to see visions again – this time mice, hamsters and Welsh choirs. She sounded worried enough to suggest that I should try and go up there for a day this week.

But it’s a busy week ahead, as Eric is back from France today for two weeks and, by some sort of Herculean effort, we should have most of the six new TV shows mapped out by the time he goes back.

Monday, July 15th

St Swithin’s Day, apparently. The weather today should hold for forty days according to the horny adage (as I’m reading Return of the Native by T Hardy, I’m full of horny adages). Well, this St Swithin’s Day was one of the coldest, wettest and most depressing days of the summer, so things don’t look too good.

Graham, looking ravaged and with a hangover you could almost touch, arrived outside Julia St at about 10.30 for a lift down to the 10.00 writing meeting at TJ’s. Yesterday had been the eighth anniversary of him and David, and G had had too much. He was fragile for most of the morning and only a large amount of gin revived him at lunchtime!

The ‘Ballooning’ story, Mr Neutron and, read last, but appreciated most, the Michael Ellis ‘Harrods Ant Counter’, which I’d put together with GC, and typed up rather uncertainly on Friday, very well received, which was most encouraging.

Thursday, July 18th, Southwold

To Southwold on morning train. Father shuffles more than even a month ago, and walks all the time with shoulders bent and sagging.

I took him out to the Queen’s Head at Blyford in the early evening. He grimly hung on to a half-pint of bitter, grasping the handle of the glass doggedly,