Diaries 1969-1979_ The Python Years - Michael Palin [185]
From here I take her down to Angela’s, where she’s to spend the next couple of days. As I leave Angela tells me that she is really feeling awful – she’s in the grip of a repetition of the depression which hit her over ten years ago. She’s on pills and anti-depressants, but these seem to do nothing for her confidence, though they may overcome the symptoms for a while.
She warned me that Ma would have to hear about it all and, as she put it, I would ‘have to pick up the pieces’ when Ma came over to stay with us on Thursday. I walked back to the car feeling almost as Angela was – on the point of tears. I feel so helpless.
Friday, March 26th
At the Tate Gallery for the Constable exhibition. It really was packed and, not having the time or the inclination to join the line of people two or three thick slowly moving round the 300-odd works in the exhibition – like a crowd lining up to pay their last respects to a dead monarch – Granny and I weaved in and out, wherever there was a gap. Once again, with pictures like the Haywain, seeing the original makes one aware of what a gross disservice to the painter are reproductions – and especially with a popular and acceptable painter like C, whose paintings are on matchboxes, chocolate boxes and soap boxes ad nauseam. There is so much delicacy of detail in the Haywain that these reproductions miss totally and it’s really a far better painting than its clichéd popularity led me to think.
I go and do some shopping in Long Acre and Piccadilly – a gorgeously rich blue sky, Londoners on their way home blinking in the bright sunlight, buildings picked out in sharp definition by the evening sun. I could have enjoyed London for another couple of hours, as it emptied for the weekend, but I had to get home.
To bed late again. Can’t bear to think of what there is to do before we fly off to New York now – only just over a week away!
Sunday, March 28th
Spend the morning at a rehearsal for ‘Poke in the Eye’.1
Jonathan Miller took the part of the director. Rather well, I thought. He made intelligent suggestions, managed to avoid sounding bossy, kept the work-rate going steadily, and didn’t at all justify John Cleese’s early grumpiness. ‘I wrote a film for Video Arts yesterday about how to chair a meeting, and one of the most vital things is for the chairman to have done his homework,’ said Cleese icily.
John is, on a good night, one of the world’s greatest corpsers.’ And I am not far behind. Silly Walks at Drury Lane, 1975.
Passport photo, 1975: big collars and mad, staring eyes. Why did anyone allow me in their country?
On Central Park South, first New York publicity trip, March 1975. I am reading from the guidebook, which always used to annoy Graham.
Terry, Ma, Jeremy Herbert, Al and me, Camberwell.
Helen, Rachel, Will and Tom with friends Diana and Sean Duncan on their boat, Pilcomayo, on the River Dee, 1975.
Fans in America, 1975. Graham lights up behind me.
Python publicity photo with Neil Innes selflessly standing in for Terry Jones.
Summer of ’75, Three Men in a Boat. Stephen Moore, myself, Tim Curry and Montmorency the dog.
Prelude to disaster. The photograph sequence (followed by the boat getting trapped in the lock gate). Uiree Men in a Boat, June 1975.
With Ma and sister Angela at Dulwich.
Next generation. Miles Innes and Tom Palin became good friends during hive at City Center, New York, 1976.
Rachel, Helen and the back garden, Gospel Oak, London, 1976.
‘Peter Cook, who apologised for his slightly glazed state saying he was recovering fiom a long night… discussing Lenny Bruces drug problem – steadfastly refuses to learn the words of the Condemned Man in our “Court Sketch “.’ Amnesty show at Her Majesty’s. (March 31st, 1976)