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Today’s dog walk grave is a weird one. It’s in loving memory of (I think) Lollie, who doesn’t get the grave in her own right and is billed as “Wife of Edgar Newton”. You’d think on your own grave you’d get the main billing and your full name, but Edgar Newton was very keen to make Lollie’s main achievement being married to him.
She was only 24 when she died in 1882, so that’s sad. It’d be less sad if she had her full name on the grave though.
More heartbreak for Edgar Newton came when he lost their son, also called Edgar (there’s a surprise) who again only has his forenames on the grave, also at the age of 24, twenty three years later.
So poor Lollie left an infant son behind her. What an unbearable story in so few words, yet still overshadowed by Edgar Newton’s arrogance in the face of personal tragedy.
The sadness wasn’t over for Edgar Newton though, whose (presumably) second wife Emily Smith died in 1916, aged 59. She at least gets a surname, but is also billed as wife of Edgar Newton, meaning he’s got his name involved in all three deaths. I think Lollie would have been 58 in 1916. Was Emily a friend (or sister?). It feels like Edgar might have moved on pretty quickly. What did little Edgar think of his new mum? He wouldn’t have known his own mum.
At the bottom of the grave in less legible and presumably cheaper engraving is recorded the death of Edgar Newton (whoever buried him missed the chance to make a good joke by saying “who was Edgar Newton” but it looks like they weren’t keen to spend too much money). Edgar lived to (I think, it’s hard to read) 1940. Maybe he had other kids, maybe he had other wives, but none of them elected to be buried with him. Maybe he spent 26 years on his own.
Even though he makes it all about him, I still felt pretty sad about this one.
Back into my showbiz bubble for a longer stretch away this time. The kids seemed genuinely sad that I wouldn’t see them til Friday. Which made me even sadder than I had been already. I don’t think I’d be cut out for the kind of career success that saw me working 6am-6pm in a different part of the country or the world to my family. Thank God I am only good enough to get one of these a year (at best).
My first class travel reverie was almost ruined as the train I was booked to go on get cancelled, but I was at the station in time to get on a train that went about 15 minutes earlier and managed to get a seat in the small first class section. Ernie had been very excited to hear I would be travelling first class and asked me to take photos. I knew the truth would not imagine his sweet imagination and this was quite a basic service anyway, but it didn’t matter as I forgot his request. I will try and find a throne and some crown jewels somewhere and pretend that that was the train.
I listened to a bit of Robert Ross’ biography of Terry Jones as I travelled, reliving the excitement of his fecund University days in student revue and of course thinking of my own stint doing comedy in some of the same places, about 25 years later. Back then Python and even Rowan Atkinson seemed like alumni from a very long time ago. But my own Oxford Revue was 37 years ago. My Revue would have seemed as distant to whoever was going up to the Fringe in 2013.
I was reminded of a very Python influenced song that I performed in maybe the first show I ever did with Stewart (and Emma Kennedy, Mike Cosgrave, Richard Canning and Jo Renshaw) which I had written at school, which was a sad dirge, sung in a dull voice (a bit like the baggage retrieval song from Python) with the lyrics:
“I wish I had invented penicillin
I really wish I had invented penicillin
I’d sing all day long I invented penicillin
I wouldn’t have to worry because I’d have invented penicillin.”
It would carry on with other verses that I can’t fully recall. I think one was “I wish I knew pi to 17 decimal places” and I don’t remember much else. Tellingly, at school, the first verse was “I wish I was a Monty Python team member.” Oh I just remembered another verse which was “I wish that I was Henry D Perky” the man who (according to a current ad) invented Shredded Wheat.
Happy days.
Even though it was derivative, there was a little spark in my twist on a format and having not thought about that song for years I did chuckle at the idea of someone who had written a song about wishing he had invented penicillin, imagining that if he did it he would then spend all his time singing about the fact (rather than singing about the wish) - plus his assumption that having achieved something (that someone else had already done) would mean he didn’t have anything left to worry about. Did I intend that as a joke at the expense of people who imagine some future success would rid them of their present inadequacies? Probably not. I probably just thought it was funny to have a song that rhymed a word with itself four times.
I don’t think this song matched the stuff that Jones et al were achieving in their own student years (even if they were probably ripping off Spike Milligan). The first sketch that Palin and Jones wrote together was the dry lecture about slapstick comedy that would feature in many future shows, including the infamous Python one at the Hollywood Bowl. My first University sketch was “My Penis Can Sing”.
I am probably not as good as Terry Jones.
I have handed Terry Jones an award though (that will probably be mentioned later in the book), so that’s something.
