Diaries 1969-1979_ The Python Years - Michael Palin [48]
Tuesday, February 15th
At 10.30 Eric arrives and we work together rewriting three film pieces of Eric’s for the next six shows. (Terry is having a day at home.) Our next power-cut comes at 3.00, and we carry on working by candlelight, waiting until 6.00 to do our typing. I must confess to quite enjoying this enforced disruption of routine. It appeals also to that yearning, deep in the back of one’s subconscious, to be controlled by the elements – it’s a form of security against all-powerful technology. The security of having to stop certain activities when the sun fades and the light goes. After all, only three generations of Palins have known electric light – before that stretch back the influences of many, many ancestors who lived in a permanent power-cut.
Saturday, February 13th
The coal strike is over. Yesterday the Wilberforce Court of Enquiry recommended 20% pay-rises for the miners on the grounds that they were a special deserving case. The miners didn’t accept immediately and in late-night bargaining with Mr Heath, secured even more concessions. The picketing was called off at 1.00 this morning, and the miners, after a ballot next week, should be back at work at the weekend. They will have been out for eight weeks -and the country, we are constantly told, is losing millions of pounds due to industrial power-cuts. It seems to me that the Wilberforce report has shown the government to be completely and utterly responsible. The miners ‘special case’ is not something which Wilberforce himself has discovered – it was clear to anyone before the strike started – but the government, faced with either admitting that their incomes policy was unjust, or trying to break the miners, as they did the electricity workers last year, chose to try and break the miners. In the end the miners won – and the weeks of reduced pay and unemployment which they had added to their already unpleasant working conditions, were made worthwhile. I regard my £50 as well spent!
An interesting sidelight to the strike has been the almost uninterrupted rise of the Stock Exchange during the weeks of crisis.
Monday, February 21st
Took a day off from writing to sort out various dull items of household management and run on Hampstead Heath in the drizzle. In the evening Graham Chapman and David and Barry Cryer1 and his wife Terry came round for a meal. Graham arrived rather drunk and sullen after a bad day’s work, and was rather bellicose to start with. At one point he started into a violent tirade against carpets, and how much he hated them. Barry Cryer remains the same – funny, considerate, straightforward and modest, a winning combination, which has been absolutely consistent since he first introduced himself to me at my first Frost Report meeting six years ago. He is the perfect antidote to the introverted unpredictability of Graham, and we all had a splendid evening.
Tuesday, February 22nd
The weather is still grey and dismal. At 2.30 the news comes through of an IRA bombing at Aldershot. An officers’ mess has been blown up in retaliation for the killings in ‘Derry. But the casualties are five cleaning ladies, one military vicar and one civilian.
Wednesday, March 15th
At Bart’s Hospital sports ground at Chislehurst we spent the day filming Pasolini’s version of the Third Test Match – complete with a nude couple making love during the bowler’s run-up. Two extras actually obliged with a fully naked embrace – which must be a Python ‘first’. The filming went smoothly, as it has done all this week. John C hasn’t been with us, as he dislikes filming so much that he had a special three-day