Life and times

The presenter and author on British parks, doomed icebreakers and a delightfully delayed train

Presenter, author, traveller Michael Palin

DESPITE OFFICIALLY being an ‘old person’, I can still stand up unaided, change TV channels, and do simple things like make television programmes. But I’m constantly being assured that life is going to be much richer if people like myself can be weaned off outdated, non-digital anomalies such as cash, newspapers, post offices and, wherever possible, human beings. I know I can’t stop progress, I don’t have the right app. But I can rejoice with a sort of subversive glee when in a public place I hear a human voice that isn’t recorded. On a train the other day, the guard took great pleasure in letting us all know that, after 45 years’ service, this was the driver’s last day in the job. His name, we were told, was Ken and it would be very nice if any of us stopped by the cab and wished him well. Despite the train being over an hour late at our final destination, I felt very proud to be British as I joined the queue to shake Ken’s hand.

I TRY TO GO out running twice a week. I am blessed by living within a short sprint or two of Hampstead Heath and my uphill and down-dale progress takes me through the beautiful grounds of Kenwood House. Recently, I’ve found security fences going up with increasing regularity to keep myself and other park users from accessing the grounds, because they have been closed to the public for some private event. This peculiar practice of closing off public parks in order to raise funds to preserve public parks is pure Alice in Wonderland. We live jammed together and we need our space more than ever. I’m all for open-air concerts but some have grown too big and too greedy.

IN RECENT MONTHS my life has been a weird dream involving William Makepeace Thackeray going to North Korea on a Victorian icebreaker. Except it isn’t a dream. I really did become Thackeray for a night, playing him in the ITV adaptation of his novel Vanity Fair. And I really did go to North Korea too, for a Channel Five documentary about the country. I found myself working on a co-operative farm there on my 75th birthday. I was expected to be ready to leave for filming at 6.30am. But at 6am I received an anxious phone call from my North Korean guide. As a result of the heavily publicised handshake meeting between the two Korean presidents, the half-hour time difference between the two countries had been abolished at midnight and I was now half an hour late. A bit grumbly at the time, but in retrospect rather chuffed. Not everyone has an international timezone changed on their birthday.

I RECENTLY TOOK the heroic and ultimately tragic story of HMS Erebus to the far corners of the British Isles. She made a pioneering journey to the Antarctic, before disappearing off the face of the earth while searching for the North-west Passage in 1845. I was so fascinated by her story that I wrote a book about it and toured various locations where independent bookshops (God bless them) coincided with our country’s naval heritage. One talk was at the Britannia Royal Naval College in Dartmouth. It was a warmish night and the doors and windows were open. At one point in my retelling of the story I got a laugh from the audience where there had never been a laugh before. Apparently a bat had done a couple of circuits of the stage without my noticing. Moments later, the largest daddylong-legs I’ve ever seen landed on my notes, obscuring a juicy quote. I ummed and ahh-ed embarrassingly before it got bored and flew away.

I rejoice with subversive glee when in a public place I hear a human voice that isn’t recorded