Diaries 1969-1979_ The Python Years - Michael Palin [365]
But always unexpected touches – he shows us the simple rush mat he always sleeps on, saying that the mat is all he needs, that and four sleeping pills. He then gets the kids to hold up the box of Mogadon as evidence of the sort of thing the modern explorer carries.
He’s keen, enthusiastic about life, music, the world – his motto is ‘Every day is a day of praise and history’. He records African tribal music and harmonises it with Western choirs into a mass he calls African Sanctus – and it is exciting, stirring, powerful music.
Friday, December 21st
Drive up to Southwold to collect Ma. An unexpected white Christmas scene at Reydon. A shower of snow followed by sharp, bright sunshine makes the countryside look beautiful. But on the way back a storm replaces the showers and it’s hard going on the A12. No-one is gritting or clearing the snow and sometimes I feel as though I’m going into a black hole as I push on past the massive, terrifying, hurtling bulk of forty-ton super-trucks, hurling mud and slush at the windscreen.
Sunday, December 23rd
Deep in the murky depths of pre-Christmas. Flat skies. Chill, damp, grimy weather. The newspapers forecast a white Christmas for the south of England. The colour supplements are flaccid and empty – all advertising budgets spent. The recession is just around the corner, but seems to be being staved off for the moment. Brian is top film in London yet again and the Life of Brian book is up to No. 3.
Next door to an excellent little party at Clare’s. Oak Villagers do give good parties and it’s marvellous not to have to drive. Hugh Latimer, Clare’s father, a wonderful, extrovert theatrical, tells me a story of how Yvonne Arnaud had once had ‘too many greens’ at lunch and in the matinee farted so severely that the curtain had to be brought down early.
Thursday, December 27th
Rain throughout the day. Great weather to be indoors before a roaring fire.
Helen’s mother reminisced over supper about H’s eccentric relations, including Norah Gibbins who, among other things, tried to raise money for orphaned German boys during the First War and slept outside all year round in her garden at Seaford, under a cover of parachute silk. I must say Rachel has inherited the genes of a remarkably strong set of maternal grandparents.
Sunday, December 30th
A cold, dry day. Light the fire in the morning and sit beside it with Ma, reading Sunday papers.
Decade spotters seem to be rather disappointed with the 1970s. The decade of selfishness, narcissism, introversion, etc, etc. I suppose for me it’s been a ‘decade’ of general upward progress – in status, work, earnings, freedom and enjoyment of life. Personally I’m well pleased. The 1980s will be interesting. Python has established itself and we are now in an almost unassailable position of respect and comfortable living – and we now have to face up to the prospect of what the hell we do with this respect, freedom and comfort. They’re not always the bedfellows of creativity.
In a sense I feel my big creative push has been and gone – and yet I’m writing as fluently as ever and taking on as much work as in those heady days between ‘68 and ‘75 when we did everything. Will the next direction be into more personal, solitary writing, using Python still as a base? Will Python wither and die of natural causes? John will be 50 in ten years’ time. But then Spike Milligan is well past 50 and still being very silly.
This extraordinarily pleasant, settled interlude beside the fire lasts only an hour or less and then I’m walking up to a party at Jack and Liz Cooper’s. Full of Hampstead folk.
Met portly Ian Aitken – Guardian political correspondent – who’s lost his eye. ‘I think the cleaner must have put it somewhere.’ He has a host of wonderful false-eye stories – including the time when he was bathing off Guadeloupe (covering a summit meeting of Callaghan, Giscard and Carter) and his eye fell out whilst diving.