Diaries 1969-1979_ The Python Years - Michael Palin [341]
Eric is in France and has sent a letter with suggestions. GC is in Los Angeles and has sent a request for another loan from Python. TJ bears gloomy news about our post-Grail tax situation. The authorities are getting tougher and could interpret our tax position in such a way that we fork out at least £60,000 of our Grail earnings to the government.
But it’s a sunny day and we are brought cups of coffee by John’s lady retainers and we spread out over his huge dining table (originally in Holloway prison) and churn out the sort of easy drivel which gives much pleasure and does not have to follow plot, story or character. JC works upstairs, writing heavily sardonic biographies of us all, and TG looks through photos.
I read out a long and inaccurate synopsis of the film which brought tears to assembled eyes (there is no better moment in one’s creative life than hysterics at a first read!).
Wednesday, July 11th
I go to Neal’s Yard and yet my heart is not really on the (Life of Brian sound-track) album – it’s somewhere else, with the children in the sun. I find myself gazing at pictures of the countryside, looking at maps, reading novels – all the paraphernalia of getting away seems much more important than the paraphernalia of getting on.
In the back of my mind plans turn towards all the things I want to do, but keep postponing – learning Italian again, going on walking weekends with the boys, travelling to India – getting out on a limb again, taking a few risks, facing a few unknowns.
A new kind of summer holiday for the Palins this year. Instead of Europe, we stayed for almost a month at Al Levinson’s house in the old whaling port of Sag Harbor on Long Island.
Sunday, July 29th, Sag Harbor
Here in the middle of this cosy, little New England town (they all call it a village, but it’s South wold size), I have, for almost the first time in a week, a few moments free of my family and Al, who is taking the boys for a swim, and my first urge is to get to the diary.
In the mornings I rise good and early and each new day is greeted with elation – a run through sweet-smelling gardens and woods – breakfast is jolly, and our mornings, spent on the beach at Bridgehampton – a huge, broad, clean sweep of sand with a big clear sea and Atlantic rollers to add to the entertainment – are unequivocally fine – cool in the water, hot in the sunshine, full of invigorating physical activity.
The holiday so far has been a helter-skelter of happiness and frustration. Great ups and downs of pleasure and irritation. I’m afraid that I cannot get France or Italy out of my mind and keep making unfair comparisons between their sophistication and the naivety of America.
Sag Harbor is a beautiful little town, with delightful clapboard houses, all comparatively well-kept, all architecturally consistent, nothing new and horrendous. It’s attractive to walk around, full of trees and the scent of flowers and yet … and yet … What is it? What is this gloss with which the American Way of Life coats everything? Is it trying too hard to impress?
Is it that the freshness of America has been near-suffocated by the materialism of the place – by the vast wealth of the country, which pours forth a million products, where a thousand would do?
Standards of food and television are appallingly low, and yet there are lots of both. Yet the standards of kindliness and consideration amongst the people are high – though they are sometimes made fools of by their over-sufficiency. See the size of so many over-fed citizens of all ages. Human incarnations of the economy of waste.
Tuesday, July 31st, Sag Harbor
At about six – when my resources were not at their best after a long, hot, tiring day – the phone rang. It was Anne H, from London, ringing to say that Warner’s go to press on the posters in two hours.
They have finally rejected our unanimous Python ad-line ‘He Wasn’t the Messiah, He Was a Very Naughty Boy’, and