I'm in deepest Surrey, in England,
to meet a writer who delights in being an innocent abroad,
a traveller in alien lands,
be it a foreign country, the distant past or the human anatomy.
I'm delighted to be spending the day with Bill Bryson.
(BIRDSONG)
Well, hello. Well, hello!
How lovely to see you, Bill. Lovely to meet you. How are you?
Well, today we're doing a slightly different Home Delivery.
We're not taking you back to Des Moines, Iowa, where you were born,
but here, which is sort of where your English life began in a way.
Well, this is Holloway Sanatorium, as it was then,
and this is where I first came in the summer of 1973.
I'd just been hitchhiking around Europe for four months
and was supposed to be going home, but instead, just by chance,
knew two girls who worked here,
and they persuaded me to apply for a job at this wonderful old...
Yes. ..Victorian psychiatric hospital.
And then met my wife, who was a student nurse here.
Luckily still your girl. Student nurse. Still my girl.
And so I kind of fell for her and fell for England simultaneously.
The thing I always remember, I mean, my fondest memory,
one of the fondest memories of my life,
is when I first started here, I was put in...
..my first ward was right up there, on the top floor,
and I can remember on an August evening when I was brand-new here,
brand-new to this hospital, brand-new to Britain and all that,
looking out that window,
and it was just a glorious English summer evening,
and looking out and watching a cricket match going on down here,
first time I'd ever seen cricket being played, and it was just...
..I really did... I just remember thinking, "This place is perfect."
Mmm. "This country is actually perfect."
Brilliant. Well, let's explore. Terrific.
Can't wait. It's a posh housing estate now.
♪ Jump in my car I want to take... ♪
What, they knocked down a pub in England? What's wrong with them?
My wife used to live down that way.
(LAUGHS) Yes.
♪ It's too far to walk on your own... ♪
I'm quite serious when I say that I think Blackpool
ought to be a World Heritage Site.
American-born writer Bill Bryson came to prominence
with his recollections of living in the UK, Notes from a Small Island.
Just don't ask me to spend a holiday there.
His travel books include Down Under and A Walk in the Woods,
which was made into a film with Robert Redford.
A Short History of Nearly Everything,
and his latest book, The Body: A Guide for Occupants,
make science entertaining and understandable for all of us.
Oh! What is this? Bill!
I can't believe this place!
I'm sure this is very much what it was like when it was first built,
but by the time I got here, which was in 1973, it was an NHS hospital.
It was pretty run-down.
It is what I remember.
First of all, you have to remember, I was only here for two years,
and this was in the 1970s, so a long time ago.
This, you know, it is kind of time travel.
It's a really interesting place,
because it was built as a private hospital in the 19th century
by Thomas Holloway and his wife, Jane Holloway.
And it was just for privileged people.
And then when the National Health Service came in in 1947,
they allowed everyone... you know, they took it over
and they allowed everyone to be here,
so there was this... it was 500 long-stay patients and 500 staff.
Mmm.
And... and it was really hard to tell which was which.
And, honestly, it was.
Everybody was so, um... but in the most charming, delightful way.
Mmm.
It was so interesting to me, 'cause, you know,
here I am just a boy from Iowa,
who, you know, had no expectations of being in England,
so my whole introduction to this... this country
was through a psychiatric hospital, and I have maintained ever since
that there is no better way to get to know the English
than by working at a psychiatric hospital.
Please, after you. Oh, thank you.
(GASPS)
What is this magnificence?
It's like a period piece. It's like a film.
What would happen in here, Bill?
The only thing that happened in here, as far as I can remember,
was... there was a badminton net in the middle of the room.
No!
And it was the... it was the poshest badminton court in the universe,
and they used to have hospital tournaments up here.
You are kidding me. So, yeah.
This is incredible! So, where were... Were the wards on the other side?
Yeah, well, I... I can't even get my bearings exactly, but...
..but, yeah, the... the wards went off to the left and right
of the main entrance and then kind of curled around to the back.
I think they've turned them into apartments, if I'm not mistaken.
Oh, this is very nice. Oh, isn't it?
I was never this comfortable when I worked here, I can tell you.
Of course, you grew up in Des Moines, Iowa.
How suburban was Des Moines to start with to want to escape?
I mean, I see now that Des Moines was a really... a really nice town.
It was a great place to grow up.
It was extremely wholesome and friendly.
It was, you know, quintessential middle America,
and it was a very decent place and prosperous and all of those things.
There wasn't anything wrong with it except that it was just Des Moines.
And so to come here was... was quite exciting
but also a little bit daunting as well.
What did your family think of you leaving prob... maybe permanently?
It was strange.
I grew up in a kind of a strange household in which we all...
..the relationship between all of us,
I had parents and a brother and a sister, and it was all amiable,
but we weren't a terribly close family,
and we all lived separate lives, I mean, even...
..and from quite an early age.
I mean, you know, you'd have dinner with the family
and then everybody would go off to their separate rooms,
and so we didn't spend... we didn't mingle,
and one of the things that really, really shocked me
when I first came here and started dating my wife,
'cause she lived... grew up just down the road,
she invited me home to her family's house on a Sunday and was...
..and we not only had Sunday lunch with her family,
but then we all retired to the sitting room
and we sat and watched television with her parents all afternoon.
And I thought, "I have never been
"in a room with my parents watching TV,"
except maybe at Christmas time or something.
You know, the idea of socialising with your family
was just a great novelty.
So, this is your parents, Bill Bryson Sr and Agnes Mary.
Pretty formidable people in their own right,
both journalists at the local paper in their town,
and your brother and sister, and then there's this... this...
..extraordinary little thing called the Thunderbolt Kid.
So you were the Thunderbolt Kid. Yes.
Was that a persona you created for yourself?
Um, the... I... I mean, I was very much younger than...
My brother was nine years older... Yeah, by how many year... Nine? Wow.
And my sister was six years older than me. And so, I... I...
Although I was the third child, I was almost like an only child,
and... and, you know, I described it in my book,
and it's really a true story, is that I found this old...
..this wonderful old sports... oiled wool sports jersey
hanging behind the boiler in the basement of our house, the furnace,
and it was just the finest thing I'd ever seen.
It was kind of moth-eaten and it was obviously,
you know, a million sizes too big for me.
All it was was this green oiled wool jersey
with a thunderbolt across it,
and as soon as I put this thing on, I just...
..you know, I became the Thunderbolt Kid, and...
..my dad actually dubbed me the Thunderbolt Kid, but I...
..I... I just, you know, imagined myself being this superhero,
sort of secret superhero, and I went through much of my childhood
really pretending pretty earnestly that I was...
..you know, that I had superpowers
and that I could vaporise people if they annoyed me.
And do you know... What an excellent skill!
And I still sometimes pretend to have it.
(LAUGHS) Zzt!
Well, you know, if I hold the door open for you and you go through
and you don't say thank you... (CLEARS THROAT)
Vaporised. Yeah. ..and off they go.
And there's a kind of satisfaction in feeling as if
you've eliminated these people.
We can't actually physically visit your family home,
but we often ask guests about a typical family meal
and what that was like around the table, and I do...
..I so love the stories in your book
about dinnertime and what your mum cooks.
In fairness to my mum, you have to bear in mind
that she did have a very busy life
and she had a full-time job at the newspaper
and her whole life was that she would
stop at the supermarket on the way home from work,
she would grab something, and then she would come in
and throw it in the oven, and her particular speciality was...
..was that she would forget to take things out of their packaging.
She would leave the, you know, cling film still on the top of things.
And so, as I joked in one of my books, you know,
I was fully grown before I realised
that cling film wasn't a sort of chewy glaze,
because it ended up sort of melted
onto whatever she cooked in the oven, and...
..and she just burned everything all the time, and...
..partly 'cause my dad really liked food
that was scalded and scorched and... and carbonised.
Nobody in the world could burn food like my mother
or eat it like my father, and...
..and so, they were blissfully happy, but it was terrible food.
Terrible food. It was really terrible.
In terms of working here, you wrote once
that you said you weren't compassionate enough.
What did you mean by that? I'm not automatically compassionate.
It's something that I do very much regret in myself.
I'm not very sympathetic, not automatically sympathetic.
I have to make a real effort.
If a puppy came bounding across the stage now, you would go...
..you'd melt and go all, you know, and I would just not.
You know, "That's great. OK, terrific."
But I d... I'm not... I don't love animals.
I don't automatically love other human beings.
OK. I, um... I wish I was, you know.
I always... the one thing I'm always vowing is to be nicer
and to stop losing my temper with the world.
What was your next job after the hospital?
Well, the hospital was just a sort of fooling-around job,
waiting for my wife to... to get her nursing diploma,
and as soon as that happened,
then we went back to the States for two years
and I finished my university degree,
and my career was going to be journalism,
so I spent a summer working casual shifts at the Daily Mirror in London
and realised very quickly
that I didn't know enough about British life
to be working at a national newspaper.
Right. I had to get some seasoning.
So I applied for jobs with provincial newspapers
and we ended up going to the Bournemouth Evening Echo.
The Bournemouth Evening Echo?
And it was just the most boring job I've ever had in my whole life,
but it was a lovely place to live,
and my first two kids were born there.
Back then, the Sunday Times in London
was the best and most exciting newspaper in the world,
and that's what I wanted to do.
I wanted to work on the London Sunday Times.
But I couldn't wait and it was really hard to get in.
I was... I was lucky that, um, the Times had a big strike
and the Times was shut down for well over a year,
and when they started, when they reopened again,
they suddenly needed a lot of staff, and so I applied
and was taken on at the Times just with a mass of other people.
Alright. So, what's this precinct?
This is Wapping, and this is, um... just here, doesn't look like it now,
but in 1986, this was the most high-tech printing works in Europe,
and this here was where the...
..the... the delivery trucks came out every night,
and there was a huge industrial dispute and...
Yes. ..they came charging out.
I started working at the Times in 1981, and it was...
..there was lots and lots of industrial problems,
so, as a way of getting round that, Rupert Murdoch set up
a secret printing plant here that nobody knew about,
including the journalists - I didn't know about it.
And then one day, in January 1986, they just announced to us,
"You're," to the journalists, "you're moving to Wapping,"
and we came here and there was this whole world
all set up here waiting for us,
so it was really quite a secret operation.
Completely fooled all the print unions
as well as, you know, the journalists and everyone else,
but he sacked essentially everybody in the building
except the journalists, so it was a...
..it was a very uncomfortable position for the journalists,
because... out there behind us on that very busy road
was one of the greatest protests, night after night of protests,
not just by the people, the 5,000 people, he'd sacked,
but also by sympathisers.
Mmm. It was really quite violent.
I mean, it was some of the most violent, uh, strike scenes
ever... ever seen in Britain in the 20th century.
And what was your experience of it? Could you see this? Could you...
It was very... it was surreal, because the building we were in,
which is just on the other side of this building,
was windowless - it was an old warehouse.
It had no windows. No windows?
So we could hear everything through the walls.
We could hear the... you know, the clip-clop
of police horses making charges,
and you could hear the roar of the crowds
and you could actually hear glass breaking
and all kinds of mayhem going on outside
while we are, you know, trying to put out a newspaper,
but in order to know what was going on outside,
we had to watch the news on television.
The only way you could find out? Yeah.
And, I mean, that was really super-surreal.
They used to make us wait in this great compound until late at night.
I mean, you know, we're supposed to finish work at maybe 11,
and we were sometimes here till 1:30 in the morning,
just being kept back by the police,
and what would happen is when all the trucks
were loaded up with the first edition of the Times and Sun
and all the other newspapers,
they would go roaring up the lane,
that would distract all the crowds, and then they would let us go,
and we... we... all the journalists would go out in a convoy
and we would have to sort of sneak down side streets and then disperse.
And what happened was one night, we... we were dispersing that way,
as instructed by the police, and we went headlong
into a crowd of people who, you know,
realised that we were journalists, and they kind of took it out on us
and smashed our cars up - that was really scary.
And that was kind of when I decided I didn't really want to...
Mmm. Be a part of it. Yeah.
Were you politicised by...
..witnessing something like that at your workplace...
Yeah, yeah. I was... ..and in your personal life?
I was very, very torn.
Particularly as... you know, as I'm saying that,
you know, we were... we were helping them to sack a lot of people
that I'd been... you know, been on friendly terms with,
and I think as a journalist, I felt kind of victimised by it.
So that was difficult. It was really awkward.
And... and, like a lot of people, I left as soon as I could.
I mean, I felt trapped by this event that was no making of my own.
Well, it's a funny old place with ghosts, isn't it,
but we'd like to go somewhere that means a great deal to you.
The London Library. I would love to.
Thank you very much. Oh, I can't wait. I've never been.
You had some excellent rules for graduating students, which I enjoyed.
Can we talk about a couple of them?
"Don't whinge." Yeah, don't whinge, 'cause...
Don't whinge. Yeah, yeah... (STAMMERS)
'Cause... Why? Don't whinge.
Nobody will ever thank you for it or think,
"Oh, yeah, that Julia, she's a great whinger.
"What a great..." You know, "She just whinges so well."
Nobody will ever give you any credit for it,
and it gets you nowhere, so just, you know, stop it.
Excellent. Don't whinge. That's an excellent one.
Um, "Never sneak up on people."
And just go "Boo," in the belief that it's amusing.
'Cause it's not. I agree.
I had a brother, my older brother,
who was a really sweet, decent human being,
but he couldn't resist that kind of thing, pranks and stuff.
Pranks. And I grew up hating that stuff.
I hate a prank. Yeah. Yeah.
We're getting on.
This is The London Library,
which is a members-only library.
It's not exclusive. Anyone can join. Yep.
But it's... but it was started in 1841
by Thomas Carlyle, the historian,
'cause he wasn't happy with the other libraries,
and it's been a members' library ever since.
And do you come here often? A lot.
I do a lot of my research here. I love libraries.
Yeah. Well, this is a really, really splendid one.
So, these are the... (GASPS)
..these are the Back Stacks...
Look at the floor! You can see all the way down!
I know.
Why do you think they built it like this?
Well, I don't know whether it's just to let light get through or what.
But it's fantastic. What a great idea!
You can see people moving around below.
Yes. I suppose it's like a club, isn't it?
It is. It's really great. See all kinds of things.
Oh, look at... This is great! There's so much packed in here.
A million volumes in this building. A million volumes!
This is like the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.
You're taking me out the back, where we're gonna
transform into a different part of time.
Well, you can... I mean, if you love books,
you can see why I adore it here.
I spend a lot of time just poking around in here.
One of the things I love about it is it's quite eccentric.
And it has... Yes!
The way they catalogue the books and divide them up
is unlike any other library in the world.
This whole section is called Science & Miscellaneous.
Mostly a kind of...
'Poaching'! 'Poaching', next to 'Poisons'.
Of course. And just beyond that is 'Pleasure'.
Why wouldn't you?
Which is probably quite a big section, I shouldn't wonder.
They never throw a book out, and it means... what it means is that,
you know, you can find the most amazing books
going all the way back to at least 1841, when the library was founded.
Almost any book that you could want, they'll have it in here,
and that... to me, that is just wonderful, but...
..but the other great thing is that while looking for a particular book,
you will come across other books that, um,
you know, you never expected to find.
I don't know what... This is... this is all a bit arcane here.
But, you know... Tilings and Patterns.
Who knew?
Right next to Plato's Ghost.
So, if you kind of just grab some of these books at random
and they turn out to be treasures.
Very often, they turn out to be useful
for... you know, if you're doing regular research,
but sometimes they're just a diversion
that keeps you entertained for an hour or two.
Oh! I love it!
Was there a point where you stopped being an American in London
and realised you were home?
Very good question, but...
No. I don't think so. I mean...
It... I mean, the fact is, I am an American. That's...
I mean, that's the kind of defining characteristic of me.
I was born in the United States. I grew up in the United States.
But if, you know, in a more general way,
is where do I feel at home, it's here.
Mmm. This is...
You know, I've lived away from America long enough now
that this is... this is... this is home to me.
Can you describe what kind of writer you are?
What kind of writer I am? Mmm.
I... I write for pay.
I... Do you?
I mean, he's so honest about it. Yes. Well, no, I mean... This is...
I'm... I'm just... I'm a freelance journalist. And... and...
You know, to me, to... I think it was Samuel Johnson who said,
you know, anybody who... who writes for other than pay is a blockhead,
and... and I kind of believe that, because...
..you know, this is what I do for...
Mmm. ..this is what I do for a living.
But the fundamental reason I do it is to generate income,
to, you know, give my family a... a decent life
and to have economic security.
It's... I don't do it, really, for the pleasure of it.
There's really no pleasure in the writing that you do?
Oh... that... again, that's hard to answer, because...
..because, yes, of course, it's...
..if you... if you think you've done well, it's... it...
..that's very satisfying, but, you know, if...
..if there isn't a pay cheque at the end of it,
don't expect me to sit down and write.
Is there a difference between journalism and your writing?
Not a whole lot, really. I mean, when I...
You know, I... I've just done this book on the human body,
and I go into it as a journalist would go into any assignment,
and I know, you know, little about the body,
I mean, no more than the average person would... would... would know,
and I do what any journalist does, which is,
you... you know, you just find out as much as you can about the subject
and then you try to put words on a page
in a way that is informative and interesting at the same time.
It... it's not a great trick or anything
and it's really just a question of being interested in a subject
and being curious enough to ask questions about it.
Thank you so much for showing me this gem of a place.
I am so glad you liked it. I know. It's amazing!
Shall we go to our next exciting place?
Absolutely. The Royal Society.
Please. Let us go.
Oh! Wonder where this door goes to. That really is another...
That's always locked. I think... That's another dimension.
That's what that is.
In the Down Under book, the book that you wrote about Australia,
is it true your publishers initially thought,
"Mmm, yeah, no-one's gonna want to read that"?
The American ones, not the British, for all the obvious reasons.
Um...
But the Americans were... were much more dubious, because there's...
..there just isn't... not because they were against Australia.
It was because travel books don't really have...
Mmm. ..the pedigree in America.
Americans just are not interested... Mmm.
..in reading about the rest of the world.
Um... Mmm. Does that shock you?
It disappoints me. Mmm.
Because I think... I think a big part of the problem with modern America
is because the people are so parochial and...
..and... and cannot see themselves as others see them.
And I think that's a great shame. It's not true of everybody.
But there's enough people there to make it a problem.
Number 7. The Royal Society.
Oh, this looks very posh, Bill.
Well, it is. It is. It is posh.
It's very historic and very grand. (GASPS)
Yes. Now, tell me about the Royal Society.
It's the oldest learned society in the world,
and it invented everything that, you know,
is connected to science, modern science.
It invented peer review. It invented... it was the first journal.
And it's had just an amazingly distinguished
body of members and... and, indeed, presidents.
Well, there's 1,400 members. Members or Fellows?
Fellows, they're called. Fellows.
Isaac Newton was one of them, Charles Darwin,
many scientists and engineers,
and, Bill, you are a Fellow of this society.
Well, I am an Honorary Fellow... Oh!
..which is an important distinction, because...
The Fellows are here because they've done something,
they've achieved something, in science.
The Honorary Fellows, it's a... it's a... a little extra thing
they give out each year for somebody
who's done something to help promote science, and they gave it to me
for my book A Short History of Nearly Everything,
and it was... it's the biggest honour I've ever... ever been paid.
Every time I come in here, I can't believe
they're not telling me to leave, 'cause, I mean,
the people who are in here really deserve to be here,
and then there's me, so... so I'm really pleased to be here.
And then there's this great board. The names.
You look at the numbers. Yeah.
And one that would jump out to an Australian is Howard Florey...
Wow! ..the inventors of penicillin.
Isaac Newton. Joseph Banks.
Now I can feel the weight of the history here.
It was just... I mean, an awful lot of...
Mmm. ..distinction there.
I don't think any other organisation in the world would have had...
I mean, mainly men, always, bit disappointing, but still.
One day, a girl will be up there. Yes, there should be.
This is some stuff from the archive...
'Some stuff'. ..that they very kindly put out.
Uh...
I have to... A lock of Sir Isaac Newton's hair.
Yeah. Isn't it amazing? That is amazing.
And I just think it's so wonderful, the little presentation.
That's his DNA. You could make more of him.
I couldn't, but...
It could be done. It could be done. ..presumably, somebody might...
But, then... but, then, this is...
I mean, this is one of the great treasures of the Western world.
This is the Principia, his masterwork,
which, obviously, I've never read and can't begin to understand.
But... How marvellous!
But this is the original manuscript copy.
So all these are stored here at the Royal Society?
Yeah, they have archives down in the basement, and there's just...
I mean, there's just amazing treasures down there.
Look at this. What happens in here, Bill?
Well, this is part of the library.
Can you believe that the Thunderbolt Kid is part of this society?
Honestly, I cannot. I mean, I'm really just amazed. It's...
It is... it is such an honour, and...
..and I always feel a little bit like a fraud here,
but when I'm on these committees, I mean, essentially,
my job is just to be everyman...
Mmm.
..to be... to represent non-scientists, and...
..and scientists need that, because most... most scientists
spend most of their lives talking to other scientists.
Mmm.
And so it... I think it is useful to have an... an additional perspective.
When you write about life in the 1950s in Des Moines,
it's very sentimental.
Do you still feel that way about that time?
Yeah. I think the '50s was a great time to be a kid.
I've... I've always said that, you know, I felt very lucky
to get to grow up in the middle of the 20th century
in the middle of the United States in a nice middle-class family.
So, you know, I was born into a very privileged world.
Do you think it's harder to be younger now, to grow up now?
Yeah. I think...
You know, I grew up in a world that... you know, people smoked.
They ate anything they wanted.
They didn't worry about... Mmm.
..you know, cholesterol levels
and wouldn't have any idea what they were.
You didn't wear seatbelts. The cars didn't even have seatbelts.
Doctors recommended that you should smoke.
Doctors recommended smoking just to calm your nerves.
What a great world. Well, you know. To calm your nerves.
Smoking is a medical, you know, procedure.
And... and so it was... I mean, you know,
obviously, with the benefit of what we know now,
this was all very, very foolish, but at the time,
it meant that people could have a lot more fun, a lot more pleasure,
without all the guilt that we suffer now.
So, were the 1950s a high point, in a way, a high point of...
..of simplicity, of living a certain way?
It's really an impossible question to answer because...
..because, of course, you're... you know, whenever you're a child,
it's... it's bound to be a high point period of your life,
because there is a certain simplicity.
There's something glorious about,
you know, not being responsible for anything,
just having to accept things the way they are.
When I look back and, you know, the reality of the 1950s was also...
..glorious as it was for me personally,
it was a period of... there was a lot of polio.
It was a period when, you know, measles could kill you.
It was a period of the Cold War, the height of the Cold War. I mean...
You know, I had no sense at all of... of risk
from, you know, war with...
..with the Soviet Union or anything like that,
but my parents would have felt it quite acutely.
So, it... it is really just a question
more of what you're conscious of as you're living through these periods.
Is the world more complex now?
The world is not only more complex now than... than it's ever been,
but it's also, it seems to me, much more crazy now than it's ever been.
And that... and that makes it...
..those two together make it more confused and confusing
than it's ever been.
I don't think... you know, I don't think there's ever been
a moment in my life when... when there has been more uncertainty
about everything - political uncertainty,
uncertainty about the environment, uncertainty about, you know,
what the future holds in store for us.
We seem to exist in this world of
kind of total uncertainty everywhere,
and it's hard to stay optimistic about it.
I do try. I'm quite an optimistic person.
But you have to work at it. What gives you hope, then?
Well, I think... I think humans are good.
You know, when you travel around the world
and see all the things that humans have... have created,
and hear the music they've created
and see the art that they've created and stuff,
you realise that... that humans
are capable of some pretty sublime stuff,
and I think... I think the ultimate hope for us is... lies in that,
that we're... we are capable of doing glorious stuff.
We don't always do it, but I think we...
..it's the capability that gives us hope.
That's the exciting part.
What advice would you give to a 19-year-old
about to set out into the world?
Oh, gosh. Um...
The... the... the most fundamental thing, I think, is... is be happy.
Be glad to be alive.
You know, I think everyone who is whatever age,
but certainly at that age, you know, should just take a moment,
once or twice a day, just to reflect upon the fact that you're alive.
Mmm. You get to, you know...
You have this glorious opportunity to see and breathe and feel and do
and... and just to exist - you know, you get to be a human.
You get to have life and revel in all that comes with that.
Mmm.
And... and, you know, so I'm constantly saying
to my own children, you know, "You didn't exist for a long time,
"and once you die, you won't exist ever again."
You know, "You are unique." Not as a bedtime story, I hope.
We're freaking the kids out as we go to bed.
"You never existed before
"and you've only got a little bit of time, so do it!"
And... and each one of us is unique. I find that amazing.
The... the atoms that make you have never come together
in quite this way before, and they never will again.
There will never be another you.
There will never be anything that's quite like you
anywhere in the universe again.
So you have this opportunity to be this unique creation for...
..you know, for the very short time that you get to be alive.
Well, how lucky is that? Mmm.
And if you can't find the time to be happy and grateful about that,
then there's really... you're missing something in life.
Well, it's been amazing being able to spend the day with you, Bill,
in London, in this place that you've made your... your home for so long.
Thank you so much. Well, thank you.
It's been my pleasure. Thank you very much, Julia.
Oh. Apparently there's a tearoom here somewhere we can go to.
Absolutely, yes. We'll find the tearoom and biscuits.