Diaries 1969-1979_ The Python Years - Michael Palin [47]
At home in the warmth of Croft Cottage, we shut out the miserable day and ate, drank, watched television and talked. The march of civil rights protesters at Newry this afternoon turned out to be entirely peaceful, which was a tremendous relief after last week’s shootings in Londonderry. In the news pictures from Newry one could see cameras – still, film and TV – everywhere, waiting for the violence that caught the media unprepared in Londonderry.
Still Mr Heath and this complacent, indolent, arrogant and unfeeling Tory government refuse to try and ease the situation. Talk in the papers of troops being brought in to deal with the miners’ strike – altogether I feel disgusted and depressed by the heartlessness of this government towards the underprivileged. From now on I am a fervent socialist. (This could change within a week – ed.)
Thursday, February 10th
Assembled for an all-Python writing meeting at Terry’s at 10.00. John sends word that he is ill. Extraordinarily sceptical response. However we work on, and for a laugh decide to write a truly communal sketch. Accordingly all four of us are given a blank sheet of paper and we start to write about two exchanges each before passing on the paper. After an hour and a half we have four sketches – with some very funny characters and ideas in them. They may all work if interlocked into a four-sketch mixture. Eric suggested that we all be very naughty and go to see Diamonds are Forever, the latest of the James Bond films at the Kensington Odeon. After brief and unconvincing heart-searching, we drive over to Kensington – but, alas, have not been in the cinema for more than 20 minutes when the film runs down. After a few minutes there is much clearing of throat, a small light appears in front of the stage and a manager appears to tell us that we are the victims of a power cut (this being the first day of cuts following four weeks of government intractability in the face of the miners’ claim). For half an hour there is a brief, British moment of solidarity amongst the beleaguered cinemagoers, but, as we were shirking work anyway, it looked like a shaft of reprobation from the Great Writer in the sky.
Friday, February 11th
So serious is the emergency that there are now certain areas which three or four times a week will be designated ‘high risk’ and liable to up to eight hours power loss per day. Camberwell must have been one of them, for we worked by oil lamp-light from 10–12, and from 3 until 5. At 5.00 drove in to Python Prods, offices to meet Alfred Biolek, here on a five-day flying visit. He told us that the show we made in Germany had been shown with generally favourable reactions and he wanted us to fly over for a weekend and discuss plans for a second German-made programme in September.
Home by 7.00 to a darkened house, so I reckon I have spent eleven of my working hours without electricity today. The news is exceptionally gloomy. The miners have refused to break and the emergency will last for at least another two weeks. A nauseating Heath speech on TV and the awful complacency of Lord Stokes1 on Any Questions moves me to send £50 to the miners.
Sunday, February 13th
General feeling of utter gloom from reading the papers – the power emergency, the civil war in Ireland, the imprisonment of anti-Smith people in Rhodesia, all rather unpleasant. Shinwell2, a politician of sixty years’ standing, was on the radio saying that this emergency was worse than the General Strike of 1926, because the feeling in the country was more bitter, and it does seem that Heath and the Conservative government – who pledged themselves to ‘unite the country’ when they were elected – have, by their non-government, succeeded in polarising it more than ever.
Monday, February 14th
Drove down to Terry’s and we worked at putting a show together. Driving home has become quite an