Diaries 1969-1979_ The Python Years - Michael Palin [151]
I find the combination of the long hours – shooting began at 9.30 and ended at a quarter to seven – the concentration of my rusty mind on lines and performance, and the physical effort of rowing and controlling the boat, utterly exhausting.
To bed at 11.15, but woke at 3.00, and tossed and turned for an hour or so, full of depressing thoughts as to my stamina and ability to go through three weeks of this. Got up at 8.00, still feeling heavy and gloomy.
Wednesday, June 18th
Filming began at Datchet – in sunshine. Police were on hand to clear a stretch of riverside road so we could film with the houses behind. After one take they told us that one of the cars held up by the filming was the royal party on its way to Ascot!
Windsor Castle, like a huge and over-drawn backcloth for a fairy tale, lay in the sun on the left bank. We worked our way up the river, ending in a sort of surreal evening sequence in the majestic, silent serenity of Cliveden Reach. Tim, Stephen and I in our little sculling skiff, the crew on Tufano’s specially designed camera boat – a simple flat-bottomed 15 feet x 6 feet rectangle with a scaffolding frame all around from which the camera hangs on a specially balanced spring (called a pantograph). It looks like a floating four-poster.
We finish filming today at about ten past eight. I drive Tim, Stephen and myself to the Swan Hotel, Streatley – our base for the rest of the film. We arrive at about 9.15. We’re all rather tired and hungry after a long day.
Our first contact with the staff of this pleasantly situated riverside hotel goes something like this:
Us: ‘Can we … eat here, please?’
She (small, bespectacled, young): ‘Ooh no!’
Us: ‘Why … er … why not?’
She: ‘It’s after quarter to nine.’
Myself (seasoned to this, so valiantly co-operative): ‘Oh, I see … and there’s no chance of squeezing a meal in for us?’ (We do see people eating in the dining-room.)
She: ‘No.’
Us: ‘A sandwich … or just a piece of cheese?’
She: ‘No.’
Us: ‘Is there anywhere round here … ?’
She (oh how Jerome K Jerome would have laughed): ‘There’s a Chinese in Pangbourne.’
Us: ‘Well … we might try that.’
She: ‘Oh, we do have a problem. We close the hotel at 11.30 and there are only two keys.’
Stephen and I – Tim adapting to the situation and choosing to sit out beside the river and sip white wine – make our way to a charming thatched-roof little pub up the road called the Bull. It’s 10.15 – they close at 10.30. Here the conversation goes (after ordering a drink):
Us: ‘Can we … get anything to eat?’
She (small, fat, middle-aged – what the girl at the Swan will probably turn into):’No.’
Us: ‘Is there … ?’
She (triumphantly indicating empty food cabinet on bar): ‘Oh, no. There’s nothing left now.’
We manage to order some nuts and crisps, though we are given these with heavy reluctance and much raising of eyes to heaven.
Us: ‘Oh, and some pickled onions, please.’
The order arrives without pickled onions.
Us: ‘Pickled onions?’
She (after brief conversation with friend): ‘No, I can’t give you any.’
Us (jaws going slack rather than tempers rising):’What … ?’
She: ‘I can’t give you any. I’m not allowed to.’
The combination of the Swan and the Bull was fairly deadly. This is Southern England with a vengeance. We feel like lepers, as we walk down the pretty, the fucking pretty little main street, clutching some of the crisps she was good enough to let us have.
Saturday, June 21st, Southwold
The longest day and my father’s three-quarter century.
Present at the party were all our family, including Rachel, just five months. There was champagne on the lawn and then various pies, patés, cold meats, salads, strawberries and coffee, etc, inside. The house coped well with the numbers and the sunshine helped to bring the whole thing to life.
Father was not in bad form – he finds it difficult to get his words