Diaries 1969-1979_ The Python Years - Michael Palin [180]
By February 13 th we have to decide how we are going ahead on the ABC case. Osterberg is keen to fight on; feels that Lasker’s summing-up was ‘transparent’, and that his decision would be reversed by the Court of Appeals. However, O has given us no indication as to how this would be achieved and on what grounds Lasker was ‘transparent’. In view of the costs involved, and the fact that no-one really has the time to single-mindedly pursue the case, I reluctantly tell Anne that I feel we should pay Osterberg’s $15,000 and forget it.
Wednesday, February 11th, Southwold
Arrived at Darsham at 11.30 – from the train I could see Father hunched up in the car – it’s not so easy for him to come on to the platform, especially on a wet, cold morning like this.
His speech is a little better, but he has great difficulty eating. The latest refinement is for him to use his teeth as and when required. He has them beside him in a plastic container and puts them in if there is some particularly tough piece of food to cope with.
The wind increases during the day, until by night-time it’s nearly gale-force. It’s the kind of weather which emphasises the bleak aspect of the east coast. But it’s cosy enough inside Croft Cottage – with the fire and my appearance on Just a Minute to listen to on a crackly radio.
This morning an IRA man, Frank Stagg, starved to death at the end of a hunger strike in Wakefield. The IRA have sworn to ‘avenge’ his death and made various threats about England ‘paying for it’ … which everyone knows they can carry out. An atrocity isn’t far off, I feel.
Friday, February 13th, Southwold
Woken by Father drawing the curtains at 8.30.
Glad to stay in, as the gales roared out of grey skies all day long. Managed an hour or so’s work on a whodunnit – for the Ripping Yarns.1
Train back to London at 6.30. Leaving them both with a certain amount of optimism for once. Clearly, Father is at his happiest at home and the fact that a nurse now baths him once a week and he goes to Blythburgh Hospital for therapy, etc, twice a week, has lightened the load on my mother a little.
In the station buffet at Ipswich the newspaper seller has a rumour for us – a bomb at Piccadilly Circus. When I finally get back to an eerily quiet London, I hear that the bomb was at Oxford Circus and didn’t go off. But it was twenty pounds-worth of TNT in the main concourse on the Underground. It could have been the bloodiest explosion yet.
Saturday, February 14th
A sunny morning. We pack the car for a weekend at Abbotsley. The sun brings people out as if it’s a holiday. Thomas gets a Valentine from Holly – which he can’t stop talking about – and Holly, of course, doesn’t want him to know it’s from her. All I get is a bill from the dentist.
Vivid impressions of South East Asia in Paul Theroux’s The Great Railway Bazaar— a book which has stirred up so many of my travelling impulses.
Monday, February 16th
Worked all day adapting the Fegg book’s ‘Across the Andes by Frog’ for one of the Ripping Yarns. Terry rang in the morning. He sounded very down – he was getting yearnings to make films, programmes, to make something – and saw the year ahead passing without achieving this.
However, he had cheered up considerably by the late afternoon and we played squash – quite hard games – and afterwards drank beer and chatted