Michael Palin: ‘Pleasure, pain – it’s all there in my diary’

Michael Palin: ‘Pleasure, pain – it’s all there in my diary’

Very little happened on that first day of the new diary, or so it seemed at the time. Yet when I re-read my entry for Thursday 17 April 1969, my diary reminds me that I played squash, had David Jason round to lunch, walked over Hampstead Heath to Kenwood House, and took a phone call from David Frost about a rumour he’d heard that I was planning a new show with John Cleese. If I had not kept a diary I would never remember all this. And how unremarkable it seemed at the time. David Jason was a friend, not a television megastar, and Monty Python’s Flying Circus, the new show John had talked about, was still a glint in its mother’s eye.

This, right here, is why it is important to keep a journal/diary/log of some sort. What seems mundane now might be one of the most important things in your life and there is no way to know unless you write it all down.

(Hat tip to Matt Kaspar once again)