Diaries 1969-1979_ The Python Years - Michael Palin [8]
Sunday, August 3rd
John C rang up in the morning to ask if I felt like working in the afternoon, so I ended up in Knightsbridge about 3.00. It’s funny, but when one has written in partnership almost exclusively for the last three years, as Terry and I have done, and I suppose John and Graham as well, it requires quite an adjustment to write with somebody different. Terry and I know each other’s way of working so well now – exactly what each one does best, what each one thinks, what makes each of us laugh – that when I sat down to write with John there was a moment’s awkwardness, slight embarrassment, but it soon loosened up as we embarked on a saga about Hitler (Hiker), Von Ribbentrop (Ron Vibbentrop) and Himmler (Bimmler) being found in a seaside guest house. We do tend to laugh at the same things – and working with John is not difficult – but there are still differences in our respective ways of thinking, not about comedy necessarily, which mean perhaps that the interchange of ideas was a little more cautious than it is with Terry. However, by the time I left, at 7.15, we had almost four minutes’ worth of sketch written.
Tuesday, August 5th
Another workday at Eric’s.1 A good morning, but then a rather winey lunch at Pontevecchio in Brompton Road. That is the trouble with working at John or Eric’s – both are surrounded by a very good selection of restaurants, temptingly easy to go to, especially after a good morning’s work, but debilitating and expensive.
Wednesday, August 6th
A thought struck me as I saw a man in an open-necked shirt walking up Oak Village – and that was that, for at least twelve successive years, the first half of August has meant Palin family holidays – either at Sheringham in Norfolk or, later, at Southwold.
I have some wonderful memories of those holidays. Of sitting in the lee of the hill above Sheringham where the golf course was and watching the steam train pulling away towards Weybourne. Of enormous games of tennis on the beach with the Sanders family, of plastic macs and wet days (they do seem to be predominant), of sitting excitedly in the back of the Austin 10 (which we inherited when Granny Ovey2 died in 1951) and the yearly thrill of seeing a pebble-house, and of seeing the sea for the first time.
Now August 6th has no special significance, it’s another working day – but it’s a token of the enormous difference between my life and that of my father or most people in the country. I have no fixed timetable. I may go away any time of the year, for any length of time, at little more than two weeks’ notice. This degree of unpredictability is beyond the sphere of most people – it is an awful thought how regular people’s lives contrive to be.
On this August 6th 1969 I am at home. Terry and I are determined to make this a really productive day, to make up for the semi-productive, rather frustrating Monday and Tuesday. We work on till 8.00, finishing our big’Them’ saga. An 85% success day. Very satisfying – and we really worked well together.
Thursday, August 7th
Drove down to Camberwell Grove (where Terry was living) at lunchtime. Lunched with Terry and D Quick, who has a week’s break from filming Christ Recrucified for BBC2. In the afternoon we worked rather slowly – lots of diversions, e.g. Terry’s telescope, which he has bought for his father’s birthday, a film which Terry bought that morning, and finally a walk. It seems at last, after almost a year of waiting, that Terry and Alison may have got the house they made an offer for in Grove Park, Camberwell. We walked past it – tall, solidly suburban, in a quiet road on top of the first hill you come to going south from Westminster.