Diaries 1969-1979_ The Python Years - Michael Palin [87]
Around 1.30 everyone leaves except Eric, who is in a cheery mood and anxious to find out about future of the group who met this morning. He and I drive down to Camden Town, and buy a kebab at Andy’s, then come back here and talk. Eric in a much more obliging and co-operative frame of mind than he has been in the past. He says he is living on no money, and I believe that from anyone who comes from Earl’s Court to Gospel Oak by bus at 9.30 in the morning.
Wednesday, September 26th
Terry and I went up to the Flask in Hampstead and had a good air-clearing talk about the future. We both feel now (c.f. flight to Calgary three months ago) that another series of Python for the BBC – with John writing a regulation three and a half minutes per show – is not worth doing, certainly at present, if at all. I was not encouraged enough by the material we wrote for the record to believe that Python has vast untapped resources. I think we may be straining to keep up our standards and, without John, the strain could be too great. On the other hand, Terry and I do have another direction to go in, with a play in commission and another on the stocks. We work fast and economically, and still pretty successfully together. Python it seems is being forced to continue, rather than continuing from the genuine enthusiasm and excitement of the six people who created it.
Monday, October 1st
Sunny and warm. Took Thomas to school. Now he doesn’t even need me to come into the playground with him. We cross the road, past the lollipop man, and then Thomas asks me to stay on the corner and runs the last twenty yards up to the school gate on his own – with his blanket and his apple.
One of my earliest memories is of the school hall at Birkdale, with my mother saying goodbye and leaving me standing there with my shoe-bag, bitterly unhappy. I must have been Thomas’s age, just five. 1948.
Drove up to André’s to listen to the tapes of the LP. Some sounded very flat. Terry G, Terry J and myself discuss possibility of an extraneous sound effect running throughout the record (e.g. Indian attacks or a cleaning lady using carpet sweeper, etc) – which could be faded up to enliven some of the less exciting sketches.
Wednesday, October 3rd
A Parents’ Meeting at Gospel Oak School. Went in with Christine1, met Jean Oddie on the door, she introduced me to Adrian Mitchell and wife.2 They were all in a long line outside enjoying an illicit cigarette before the meeting began. Meeting attended by 150 or so parents. Headmaster says this is remarkable attendance. He has been asking around other schools and finds that most have less than ten parents along to meetings like this. But Gospel Oak does demonstrate what tremendous differences there can be between schools within the state system.
This school has a nucleus, or perhaps even a majority, of enlightened, liberal, Guardian-reading parents, who are concerned about their children and the way they’re brought up, to the point of obsession. They not only read books and articles about education, they also write them. It must be one of the most literate, articulate parent groups in the country. The school functions better through this interest – more time can be spent teaching the kids than disciplining them, and everyone seems to benefit all round. But the disparity between Gospel Oak and other schools the Head Teacher mentioned is disturbing – for when people talk of state education as providing equal opportunity for all kids, they are in cloud cuckoo land. I’m just glad Thomas is at Gospel Oak where opportunities are more equal.
We elect a Parent Manager for the ILEA Manager’s board, and then are shown a 20-minute film about child molesters. Quite well-made, I would like Tom to see it. A discussion on the merits of the film afterwards. Lots of articulate women. There must have been upwards of 100 psychiatrists among them.
‘Discover for the first time the full story of my great-grandfather, Edward Palin, who married Brita Gallagher, an orphan of the Irish potato famines of the 1840s.