So there it is then.\u00a0 Three score year and ten.\u00a0 Done and dusted.\u00a0\u00a0 Except that nowadays thanks to modern medicine, and better diets, we can all expect to exceed the Biblical speed limit.<\/p>\n
Seventy is the new black.<\/p>\n
All sorts of people wanted to talk to me on the occasion of my Seventieth birthday, as if for all the world I was having a Parade down the Thames or launching a new Product.\u00a0 Even the silly old Daily Mail wanted to interview me, as if they haven\u2019t done enough damage to old friendships.\u00a0 Thankfully John Cleese and I have taken a lot of care to repair the harm they did to our relationship and I don\u2019t care to give them an excuse to revive a story they invented in the first place.\u00a0 Python\u2019s at War!\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Really?\u00a0\u00a0 I\u2019ll tell you what a war is sonny.\u00a0\u00a0 I was born during a war.\u00a0 A motherfucker of a war.\u00a0 By March 29th<\/sup> 1943 Great Britain had struggled through three and a half long years of an impossible war against Hitler.\u00a0 The nightly aerial bombardment of cities, the terrifying U boats sinking convoys of vital food,\u00a0 the sense of isolation that we stood alone against a Continent entirely enclosed by Nazism.\u00a0 We should never have survived, but thanks to the indomitable will of Winston Churchill we fought on alone, until eventually Hitler declared war on the US, a few days after Pearl Harbor.\u00a0 Only then could we be reasonably hopeful of survival.\u00a0\u00a0 Still another two more years of terror and terrible bloodshed would pass before Hitler finally committed suicide in his Berlin Bunker.\u00a0 Then the nightmare years of the Cold War, Stalinism throughout much of devastated Europe, the Iron Curtain, the Nuclear Nightmare of the arms race, and at home, rationing, shortages and devastated bomb sites everywhere.<\/p>\n And you think your world is bad!<\/p>\n Oh no, the internet is down\u2026..<\/p>\n It\u2019s as though I was born on a completely different planet.<\/p>\n Well a bit, obviously and not for me obviously because I was far too young, but there was quite a lot of sex during the war, or we wouldn\u2019t be here.\u00a0 Sexual liberation didn\u2019t begin until the Sixties, which themselves didn\u2019t begin until 1963.\u00a0\u00a0 They too were late.\u00a0 And the Sixties are over rated.\u00a0\u00a0 Everyone seemed to be having a much better time than me.\u00a0 Still they brought us all the fun things like rock \u2018n roll, and drugs, and of course The Pill freed young women from the terrors of abortion and unwanted pregnancy, only to face them with the terrors of randy young toads like me, fresh out of 12 years of Boarding school.<\/p>\n It was all a very long time ago and I shan\u2019t bore you, or even disgust you, with my memories.\u00a0 I\u2019m just a grateful customer of consumer planet Earth.<\/p>\n This isn\u2019t an Award show but I\u2019d like to thank (cue playoff Music) my wife, my son and daughter, my ex-wife, my family, my in-laws, my many friends and my Python colleagues.\u00a0 In fact everybody except that short, twisted little bastard suing us\u2026(Mercifully the music brings him to a close.)<\/p>\n It\u2019s been a great time and I have enjoyed myself.<\/p>\n It is still an amazingly unlikely privilege to be born on this planet.\u00a0 I treasure it every day.<\/p>\n Thanks for the memories.<\/p>\n Thanks for the ride.<\/p>\n And thanks to all you Fans, Trolls, Tweeters and Bloggers for all your kindness and good wishes.<\/p>\n Pope Eric of Redditch.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" So there it is then.\u00a0 Three score year and ten.\u00a0 Done and dusted.\u00a0\u00a0 Except that nowadays thanks to modern medicine, and better diets, we can all expect to exceed the Biblical speed limit. Seventy is the new black. All sorts of people wanted to talk to me on the occasion of my Seventieth birthday, as […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-423","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ericidle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/423","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ericidle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ericidle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericidle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericidle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=423"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericidle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/423\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":426,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericidle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/423\/revisions\/426"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ericidle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=423"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericidle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=423"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericidle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=423"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n