Diaries 1969-1979_ The Python Years - Michael Palin [301]
She was not unkind, but the very nature of her language and way of expressing herself produced some treasured lines … ‘Do you know, our gardeners, every night, whenever they go home …’ I wait with bated breath for the revelation, ‘… always take a little bunch of weeds with them.’ She was referring to the Tunisian habit of not wasting anything. She was also good on not ‘spoiling the local people’. Her example was not giving them the best Fortnum and Mason tea, ‘which they probably wouldn’t like anyway’.
Friday, September 29th, Monastir
A hard last day of the week. Into the small Ribat today, where a hypocaust has been constructed which is even harder to walk through than the tunnel. It’s very hot, too, and besides being encumbered with extraordinarily clumsy props, there’s an almost stifling smell of incense1 inside the tunnels.
A BBC film unit arrive to shoot us. They look a sad little group – white and flabby and rather down at heel. Makes me aware how well we all must look after three weeks of sunshine out here.
Swim in the sea at lunchtime. Re-do the Ex-Leper ending afterwards. All sorts of things go wrong – a plane flies over, the BBC camera crew get in shot, the Ribat lavatory attendant gets in shot, an extra called Mahomet wanders in and out of shot at unpredictable moments, as no-one takes the trouble really to explain things to him.
Terry G keeps strewing the ground where I’m standing for the Ex-Leper with scatterings of sheep’s legs, squashed water melons and foul-smelling water around which the flies gather.
Then back to crouch in the tunnel again as Francis. John Stanier, the operator, says it isn’t nearly as bad as filming forty feet down in a water-filled sewer in Midnight Express. This cheers me a little. It’s now after seven and darkness has fallen on the Ribat. Final massive shot of the wall being cleaned at night. Comradeliness of night-shooting compensates for feeling of discomfort caused by dirt, very uncomfortable gear and cold wind.
Sunday, October 1st, Monastir
Beside the sea an Arab boy is striking a recalcitrant camel with a stick. Big, swinging blows directed at the head. Have noticed before that there are some quite vicious camel and donkey punishers plying the Corniche. Tania once saw an elderly man striking an even more elderly and wretched horse with such force that it fell on to its side, whereupon he began to kick it. Tania (ex of Bronx Zoo, and as fine an example of how to treat God’s creatures well as you could wish to find) ran up and remonstrated with him.
The hotel is quiet. Tim Hampton [our line producer] arrives at five to eleven with his four-year-old son Piers to play tennis with me in the Python competition.
Our tennis match, on a rough-textured, dusty court, surrounded by palms and reminiscent of Barbados, lasted for nearly one and a half hours in punishing heat. Neither of us could serve very well, but we played comfortable, if unexciting rallies – and took almost every game to deuce. Tim, an awfully pleasant and well-mannered chap, was a gallant loser – and I a winner only by consistent mediocrity and once holding my serve.
Woken at a quarter to one by flashes. A violent storm passes down the coast. Almost continuous blue, yellow flashes and hotel-splitting cracks of thunder. And torrents of rain.
Monday, October 2nd, Monastir
Wake at six. Today we’re at Sousse, filming outside the city walls, where Zeffirelli filmed his crucifixion scenes. The day doesn’t look promising. Though it’s not actually raining, the countryside is waterlogged and the sky much cloudier than usual. It’s cooler too.
The opening shot (of Mandy and Brian) seems to take forever, and I sit around, half-naked, made up as the Ex-Leper. I’ve even been evicted from my caravan, which is being used as a make-up base for extra lepers. An hour and a half before I’m used – leaping up, bronzed and fit, from a crowd of lepers at the city gates. Eric is quite impressed by my Steve Reeves-ish torso.
No sooner is the leper shot done, than the heavens open and a steady, unspectacular