Palin’s Diaries: The Python Years
October 8th, 2006
Palin’s latest post suggest he still has a little while to go with his “New Europe” series I wrote about last November. But he has recently been back in England to publicise the publishing of the diaries he kept during 1969 to 1979; the years in which he worked on Monty Python.
I bought the hardback
Reading through the days it’s intriguing to catch a glimpse of the creative process behind the “Monty Python” series. It comes across as quite slap-dash and it’s quite remarkable that Palin once doubted the quality of something that has lasted such a long time. Python enthusiasts will no doubt pour over every word of these sections, but I’m also just as interested in his entries on East Anglia, particularly Suffolk, my home county.
Wednesday, August 6th [1969]
[…]
I have 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…
It’s funny reading something which also describes my memories of that area. As a family we used to go on long walks around Sheringham on the incline, so at some points we had a nice vantage point over the surrounding area. I can remember seeing the old steam train on multiple occasions billowing out over the bridge and along the railway lines near the coast. Of course that was during the 90s/00s, but it’s still going on after all that time.
Monday, October 19th [1970], Southwold
[…]
Saw welcome additions to the Southwold scene — two Adnams drays, with big dray-horses. The have only just been introduced — to deal with local deliveries, apparently to save the money on the lorries. I must say they add to Southwold’s atmosphere…
There was a piece September-gone on “Look East”, the BBC 1 news program for the East of England, about how Adnams have stopped using the dray-horses to deliver ale to the pubs around Southwold. It’s sad, but at least the whole atmosphere of Southwold I wrote about in Charley’s Aunt still lives on.
Thursday, May 8th [1975], Southwold
[…]
Have promised to take Dad to Lowestoft — which we do…there is a new and splendid library in Lowestoft, and here my father would have been really happy. However, on approaching it, we are faced with a notice on the door: ‘OPENING OF THE NEW LIBRARY …’ –encouraging so far– ‘… THE LIBRARY WILL BE CLOSED ALL DAY FOR THE OPENING’.
This entry was about the library in my home town. Since 1975 it has been redeveloped again and I went to the opening in February 2003 with H..
Blue Peter presenter Konnie Huq did the honours. I remember thinking she looked smaller in real life, but by how much I never knew: we never met as there was a permanent three-deep crowd around her.
Some of the text in the diaries could be construed as banalities, but of course, won’t be. This is because reading such a diary is like watching someone kicking along stones while walking along a path–sometimes half-heartedly–but as we know where and what the path leads to, every scuff-mark in the dirt becomes fascinating. As Palin puts it:
What proves to be important over a long period of time is not always what a diarist will identify at the time.
For those interested I encoded the Front Row episode he was on as a downloadable file. It’s encoded in the speex format (which is best for speech) and requires you to have the codecs on your system. If you’re using Windows Media, you’ll be interested in my ogg for Windows Media post as the installation package also includes the speex codec.
- Front Row with Michael Palin (right click save target as) 6MB Speex file.
October 8th, 2006 at 11:04 pm
Ah Monty Python…
“your mother was a hamster and your father smelled of elderberries!”
::sigh::
October 23rd, 2006 at 9:42 pm
[…] Though I admit I started reading Palin’s Diaries over a coffee in the mini-Starbucks in Borders Bookshop (while the others were shopping) but it all seemed very artificial. It was implied that you could buy a book from Borders and settle to read it over a coffee in the same session, but I found it screamed “pretentious arse literary person”, which I suppose is somewhat true, but I don’t like to make the fact so obvious. […]