Diaries 1969-1979_ The Python Years - Michael Palin [126]
1 A Victorian pile in Edinburgh where officers were sent for treatment of shell-shock during the First World War.
1 Hadrian’s Wall was dropped later as being too far away. The Scottish National Trust had vetoed most of our castle locations, deeming the script ‘not consistent with the dignity of the fabric of the buildings’. Doune was a privately-owned castle.
2 Director of Photography.
1 Lilian Blacknell, neighbour, cleaning lady, baby-sitter and general good sort.
1 Drew Smith was stills photographer on the Holy Grail.
1 The Public Broadcasting Service (Channel 13). The only non-commercial channel on US television. It is supported by public subscription.
1 Douglas Adams, who later wrote The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, had recently been asked by Graham to help him on his solo project Son of Dracula.
1 Madeline Bell, African-American soul singer who had many hit’s in the UK with the group Blue Mink after making a mark as a backing singer for Dusty Springfield.
1 Secretary of State for Social Services in the Heath government. Architect of free-market Conservatism.
2 MP for St Pancras North.
1 Sam Jarvis, our house-painter.
2 Anne had taken over as our manager from John Gledhill.
1 Nigel and Judy Greenwood. Together with elder sister Sarah, they were the three children of my father’s sister. Nigel was a couple of years older than me.
1 I was deep into John le Carre’s Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy and for quite a while tended to see everything through his eyes. And November is a very le-Carré-like month.
2 Lynsey de Paul. Singer, songwriter, glam rocker and, for a few years, our neighbour. She sang the British Eurovision entry in 1977.
1 Nigel Walmsley and wife Jane. Nigel was at Brasenose with me and went on to run the Post Office for a while. Jane was a journalist and TV presenter.
1975
Wednesday, January 1st
No newspapers, no letters. A bank holiday and all that that entails. All my working urges suddenly evaporate. Everything is still and quiet outside. Decide to treat it in the spirit which Heath intended this holiday when he decided on it for the first time last year. Rang Ian and Anthea [Davidson] and invited them for drinks, rang Robert for his mulled wine recipe and settled down to not working until this afternoon. But, well, one thing led to another. I should have started a play, Ian should have been writing for The Two Ronnies, Anthea should have been designing her summer clothes for the shop and Helen should have been having a baby, but somehow twelve and a half hours, four bottles of wine, three or four beers, several games of Scrabble and cribbage and one Indian take-away meal later, we were all still in the sitting room.
As Anthea said, this could be the year we learnt not to work too hard!
Monday, January 6th
A dull, overcast day. A gusting moderate wind sends icy draughts into my eyrie.1 It takes most of the morning to warm the place up. My brain doesn’t seem to warm up at all, and I struggle with an uninteresting idea for a play.
After lunch I take Thomas and Anthony Tackerberry to see Dr Who and the Daleks at the Adelphi. The kids are good company – the seriousness and lack of self-consciousness of six-year-olds makes their conversation a delight to listen to. Anthony, having told me his father was a barrister, said to me, ‘I know what you are … you’re a filmer.’ Or the time he’d hit his head on a radiator – ‘My God it hurt,’ he said, with such feeling you almost had to wince.’ It came down my head and down my neck and onto my shirt …’ adding, almost as an afterthought, ‘the blood.’
Anyway, we arrived early. Parked in the now almost deserted streets of Covent Garden. The main market buildings are fenced off. I don’t know what they’re doing in there, but the whole area could be allowed to become a most amenable shopping, eating, walking, living