Letter from A. Broad: Recent Episodes
Muriel Murch
Letter from A. Broad starts with a picture and a pang of the heart. From there it must beat into life, be penned as a letter and finally produced into a radio broadcast.
This is a quiet room, saved now for big occasions with family or friends but in this solitary time I take it for my own. The stillness calls me and I welcome it putting my pen to the page bringing immediate and long-past memories together, taking time to talk to the page.
Libraries carry the past forward to the present and into the future. The knowledge and truth stored safely from the Library of Alexandria through to the likes of Wikipedia and The Internet Archive, and all libraries, are the creations of our minds and those looking to control the narratives of history are oft times fearful. It is not that long ago that the burning of books took over from the burning of witches. The concept of an open and acsessable library is an ancient democratic idea, and for the destruction of democracy access to knowledge and art must be curtailed.
As the lights came up the audience of some film makers, film buffs. and children settling in for the Q and A. A young girl who had participated in the fun children’s hour hosted before the film asked Walter “Is Oz real?” and he answered, “Well that is the question isn’t it?”
But supper has to be quick, we are on location with a gig after all and we walk our way from the restaurant to Horatio's Bar and ‘The Space’ on Brighton Palace Pier. Dusk has arrived and day trippers were leaving the pier as film buffs are arriving, bustling in, ordering a drink or two and settling into the chairs arched around The Space. It is late by the time the last fans leave and we walk back along the pier, with the waves lapping underneath drowning out the sound of the cars heading back to ‘Hove Actually’.
It’s the writers, it’s the publishers, and it’s the bookstore owners that come together to give us the books we read. Over the years publishers and publishing, both in big and small houses, has grown and changed how a book gets into our hands and our hearts. It is not often that one gets to sit down with a working publisher who is willing to talk about the ups and downs of the publishing business today.
Even here in this quiet corner of London we feel it, the head-shaking from our neighbors, the decisions not to visit America - the US president is on every newscast in this country and around most of the world and that is possibly a Very Important Thing for him.
Even in the worst of times, which for so many people in the world this is, the spring sunshine is bringing warmth and a moment of peace within the despair of their lives.
The forests and parks are the American Jewels, beloved by peoples of all parties, persuasions, income levels, rural and city dwellers alike. And they - we the people - are coming together, supporting where we can the rangers and Park personal dismissed out of hand by the playboys in Washington.
We are older and need to tidy up our lives. We are not cleaning out the cupboards and barn stalls as we should be, instead have been writing of our work, our lives and worlds together and apart. There are family stories to repeat, cinematic history and community evolution to record.
Raul has been a programmer host on KWMR.org for almost 25 years and throughout that time has brought us guests who make us think, laugh and ponder in sorrow. When he asked me to join him on air I had no hesitation on saying 'Yes' trusting he would challange me and make me - the guest - think outloud. The result is a bit of a ramble through my mind, my life and work. I hope you enjoy it.
Lady Pechell was older than the young mothers making do with their ration books, trading eggs and butter from small holdings for gin from goodness knows where. On shopping days during the week they came to Mrs Max’s Café, to be together for an hour. To commiserate about all and everything, trying to put their lives together as the war continued, while Lady Pechall quietly fed me lumps of sugar.
Then I look particularly at the women who - like our late Queen - know the subtle messages of the clothes they wear and the actions they take. Michelle Obama is absent. Hillary Clinton standing beside her very trim husband is wearing a Peace on Earth broach.
As I make my marmalade, I remember my mother making hers and the rows and rows of jars put away in the larder. I am thinking again of my friends in England. We are older now and knocked about by the snow and winter weather. The silent whiteness will only be beautiful if they can be safe walking to the church, laying this loved one into his grave, before returning with their memories to the safety of their homes.
Our town, Bolinas - there, said it out-loud - has been without its post office for 666 days and counting. And we are counting, and marking it down, writing letters, going to meetings, in public and in private and hustling, trying to right this wrong. This town, and others around the country like us, little ones, with not too many people, may not be considered worth the time and effort needed to put things right.
We sit down early watching the theater fill until someone tries to get everyone to their seats as ‘the show is about to start’ but it is tricky when the past Speaker of the House is now busy speaking in the isles.
It was in 1953 that the World Meteorological Organization in the US began giving women’s names to storms and hurricanes. It wasn’t until 1978 that they began to accept that many of the gods of the sea and winds were male and also lose their temper. In 2014 the UK Met office began to do the same. So here we are at the tail end of Bert, who, like a flat-capped boozer, is weaving about, losing his way going home across the North Sea.
While politics plays out on the world stage England continues to play out a mix of lorry-like thievery and home-grown purity. The world famous cheese market of Neal’s Yard Dairy was cleanly relieved of 22 tons of cheese in 950 wheels of cheddar valued at £300,000. While the police seriously consider deliveries to Russia or the Middle East, chef Jamie Oliver was more down to earth tweeting, “There has been a great cheese robbery. Some of the best cheddar cheese in the world has been stolen,” and added “If anyone hears anything about posh cheese going for cheap, it’s probably some wrong’uns.”
But suddenly there are quick soft running footsteps, and a child’s voice shouting “I ain't’ done nothink.” More running footsteps, a longer stride and a uniformed youth catches up with the child, who is clutching a brown paper shopping bag and still yelling. “Let me go, I ain't’ done nothing.” Faces lift from the phones and those in the taxi queue look as the young officer catches the barely clothed child wearing shorts and a very oversized t-shirt.
But the Green Memorial Hospital is in the Northern province of Jaffna, a strong Tamil district and during out time the war was still active..... Everyone was very polite but clear, explaining as gently as they could that the troubles precluded them sending anyone with us to Jaffna and certainly not allowing us on the trains where murder was not uncommon.
The daily Parliamentary schedule allows that after the morning’s Prime Minister’s questions there is a pause for those who have meetings to attend - to leave. On the morning when the report was to be presented the choking exodus of members of parliament was sobering to those who remained seated and disgusting to those survivors watching.
St. Thomas’s Hospital was first dedicated to serving the poor, the destitute and homeless and though it has become a world renowned teaching hospital it has remained open ever since. It is seeming and appropriate that the wall that cradles the hospital close to the Thames and faces the Houses of Parliament is still decorated with painted hearts and messages commemorating the thousands who died in the Covid epidemic that began in January of 2020
Edna arrived at the radio station in a fuss. Her plane has been delayed and her luggage was lost. She was as tiny and Irish as I was tall and English but quickly I saw that we were both nervous. Edna upset at the loss of her luggage and the fact that her silver pendant had rubbed a stain on her white jumper. I was terrified of her intellect and sexuality.
But how will it play out in greater America? Is America really ready to put all of its prejudices aside? Kamala Harris is: a woman, a caramel-colored woman of mixed race with a Jewish husband, a lawyer, and from California. Now there will be endless discussions - but maybe it is a time to think, know what we know, what we do not know and, as some say, understand the difference.
A small grilled window sits facing the square where - at night time - a mother could - between 1660 and 1875 - raise the grill and lay her new-born babe on the rota where friars, on their night-time shift, sat waiting for a delivery, not as midwives for a wanted child, but as caretakers receiving the fruits of enslaved and then abandoned love.
Mark is deft in drawing out the information he wants from his guests and dropping in, like sweet strawberries, clips from the films they are talking about, for after all it is film that Mark and his audience are here for. But like all good hosts he also turns the questions a little more inward onto the guests.
The grey sky is pouting - there is no sun - just a half-hearted threat of rain. The London season is muted; the Chelsea Flower Show and Royal Ascot Race week do not shine as brightly in splashing colour across the weekly magazines.
Finally, after Teresa May 2018 appointment of Brian Langstaff his report has landed in Parliament and is damming. Langstaff was not the protecting Safe Pair of Hands that May’s government had hoped. Hearing the testaments of patients and their families, seeing the look on the faces of politicans and whoever else he spoke with as they lied to him made for a 2000 page plus report that defamed them all.
In 2008 Eleanor Coppola published her book ‘Notes on a Life’. It did well, though was received with mixed reviews; some people were curious about the life of a Coppola, others about art and relationships, while others understood that a woman’s world is that – a woman’s world – and the challenges that women face, … Continue reading Eleanor Coppola
The student protests with Pro-Palestinian sympathies about the bombing of Gaza are growing around the world, each country’s universities going about their demonstrations in their own cultural way. On the campuses here in England because so far there are no overt clashes between the students, the administration and police - they are not covered by the evening news. While the young students and some professors already know the cost of speaking out, they are prepared to do so.
The weariness that is shown by the torn Ukrainian flags is but a reflection of the faces of both the Ukrainian and Russian soldiers. Satellite pictures of Russian graveyards show their expansion and a rough estimate is over 50,000 Russian and 31,000 Ukrainian troops killed from this war so far. Mothers do not like to hear such numbers and know that their sons are among the fallen.
Andrés’s stride across the world stage is large like the Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who is also untrained in the school of politics. Andrés schooling in the kitchen as Zelenskyy’s on the stage has given both men the skills of hustle, the art of seduction, both slicing and seasoning each connection to fit and join with another. Is it possible that it is these artists that can chip away at the gates of death, calm the storms of war, to bring a peace at the table.
The farm calls for focus and sends the world of wars further into the outskirts of my mind. Though the horrors that are occurring all the time - everywhere - still return to my consciousness when I try to rest from the chores that face me here.
But this last weekend I had to mange it - Hollywood - because it is ‘that time of year again’. Oscar was coming. But there is foreplay in the form of the British BAFTA awards appearing in London a month beforehand, like a butler announcing ‘Dinner is served.’ And then in Los Angeles the weekend before the Oscars, the Industry Guilds all giving their awards. It’s a busy time and Hollywood, Beverly Hills and the tentacles of Los Angeles are gratefully twitching and alive with business.
This single death takes over my consciousness as I think I can imagine it - while the multiple slaughters are that are occurring in Gaza and on the West Bank leaves me sifting through pictures of rubble, hospitals and carnage, not really knowing who or what I am looking at, or for. Navalny’s death has me remembering the South African Activist Steve Biko.
Looking back on that year, and the politics that were uppermost in so many minds, it is hard to accept where we are now. Everything seems more - nothing seems less - and it is frighting for all of those paying attention. Vanessa, and others who have hit that 80 year date, still struggle and sometimes succeed to put the political and artistic work in a perspective that encourages those who follow.
- but it is with the stories that hold the slimmest degrees of separation that I carry. We have friends who are housing Israeli refugees in Paris; another young woman who fled Russia now lives with her mother as refugees in Tel Aviv; a Palestinian artist who has been silent since reaching out in the beginning of October. Our 8-year-old grandson’s best friend is from Ukraine, living with his grandmother in The Netherlands. These are the stories I can hold in my heart.
It is the first time we have seen such an acknowledgment from a festival and it seems fitting that it should occur here where the emphasis has always been on the heavy lifting that it takes to be a cinematographer and to make movies. The yellow-vested stage hands arrive carrying three sofas and the recipients of this year’s gold frogs and tadpoles come to sit alongside those who have made this year’s festival possible and still the full audience is on its feet acknowledging that just as Copernicus wrote in his revolutions, we are all like the stars in the heavens and the universe beyond, elliptically revolving around each other.
‘Yes Minister’ first aired on the BBC television in 1980 until it ended in 1988, possibly due to the fact that it was becoming harder to distinguish the comedy series from the nightly news casts that followed. Among the many quotes attributed to the Cabinet Secretary Sir Humphrey is “Minister there is going to be and Inquiry” to which the reply from the Prime Minister Jim Hacker is “Oh good, then nothing will happen.” Well yes and here we are again -
While waiting and watching Walter sign a new edition of his old ‘Blink’ book I am gently surrounded by the young people who are there for us. They hover like bees finding a new flower but instead it is I who take from them, as each has a story, and war, government policies, and economic hardships feature in every one.
Coming home from the market, and thinking about what to write for this weekend letter - focusing on the Labour and Conservative Party Conferences that take place in September and October - but while I was plucking carrots, choosing cheese and walnuts - another war exploded. Israel was attacked from The Gaza strip by Hamas in the biggest attack for fifty years.
Chris’s family along with the police are not alone in their mistrust of the government. This next weekend the Conservatives are holding their Annual Party Conference in Manchester. Which is a bit rude - to put it mildly - where the main item on the agenda is the closing down of the continued construction of the High-speed Rail link that travels from London to Birmingham and is scheduled to go to Manchester. The South/North divide is strong in England, and Andy Burnham the major of Greater Manchester sees this move for what it is. Like a true northerner he is able to speak his mind.
There were as many European Union flags and berets in the audience as their were Union Jacks. Members of the Government are asking for another investigation by the BBC but it could be - that just like the late Queen before them - with her clear message hat, the people are speaking calling for a greater self than just this treasured Isle.
‘Ello darlin’” He calls to me, having long forgotten my name and it being too old a friendship to ask to be reminded. And we chat, about this, that, the other, and loneliness. A kiss is always welcome. The last time I saw Jim he was walking slowly with his cane, going to the bus stop for the aforementioned 168 bus on his way to The Royal Free Hospital in South End Green where the bus stops right outside of the hospital - in both directions
“It came to me last night, we are bit like ancient oak trees, a bit bent and gnarled, but the inner strength keeps us going. So from one Oak tree to another, take care of your roots and branches but wave your leaves merrily into the air whenever you get the chance.”
Salman Rushdie took a quote from ‘The Book of Laughter and Forgetting’ “The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting.” And this is why there are novels, poems, songs and biographies of work and of people written - to hold onto what we know as true for as long as possible remembering the stepping stones that were laid down for our work and we provide for those that follow.
We seek him here we seek him there and the whereabouts of Yevgeny Prigozhin the Russian General who took a group of mercenary fighters towards Moscow and then back again, is reminiscent of Humpty Dumpty who took a big fall - as I remember - and all the kings horses and all the kings men couldn’t put Humpty together again.
The Government party-gate reports are in, and the votes on ‘did Boris Johnson break the rules the government set for us all?’ were cast. 354 ministers said yes, 7 puffed no while a few slippery ones went missing. It is too much all too foolish and for this moment I am closing my eyes and ears.
It came on Saturday - effectively immediately - Boris Johnson resigned from his parliamentary seat of Uxbridge and South Ruislip - a Greater London constituency inside of the M25 Motorway for those who need to know - It was on the front page of the Financial Times Weekend Supplement but - below the fold. Michael Heseltine, the former deputy Prime Minister under Margaret Thatcher - keep your friends close but your enemies even closer - described the move as “a brilliant coup de théâtre - and - it is … totally unprincipled and dishonest.”
On Monday evening our plane touched down in Athens Airport 59 years after we left - not knowing if we would ever see each other again. The drive to the city dips in and out of old memories. Small towns and old olive groves spread out in age, showing dreams made, broken and reset as the trees are realigned to the country’s fortunes. The scattered sage and scrub are muted in the decaying dusk before we enter the city center where there is not a refugee to be seen.
It was raining - of course it was - with the steadiness that puts up umbrellas and gives rise to the English complexion. It was not cold.
Once again the Government’s knickers are in a twist - and all of a sudden it doesn’t seem so far a stretch between rapping Gary Lineker’s knuckles, clipping Sir David’s prime-time wings, and jailing Vladimir Kara-Murza.
Mother is very angry . She has tried to hide it, burping and farting, holding her wind in as best she can until she exploded. Two weeks after this initial emesis she has vomited again. The latest death count is to 47,000 and still rising. How can one care for the fusses of politicians and small scrappy wars where the planet is so attacked by the creatures who feed off of her.
As the flurry of this last scandal broke, a government minister - whose name is not worth looking up - suggested that if anyone feels intimidated by a police officer they should ‘Wave down a bus’. It is clear that this government, like those before it, are as afraid of the police as are the general public. It is not surprising that this week a crate of 1071 rotten bad apples was left outside of New Scotland Yard in London, enough to ruin every batch of hard cider coming out of Somerset.
November rolled like storm-tossed tumbleweed into December and the nights slid earlier into darkness each evening. Now December is ending and even through the storms covering America the light is beginning to return.
November has closed in and daylight already slips away before tea-time leading into the long evenings. For amusement we watched our new prime and cabinet ministers dance a Scottish highland eight-some reel as partners were swung about, changed and reunited as fast as the fiddler could play. But a Prince who has become the King rehearsed more than dancing in his beloved Scotland
Later in the summer, the community (there is that word again) library hosts a barbeque party for the volunteers. A little wine is drunk, some sausage rolls and sweets are eaten and I ask Ben if he would talk to me about his book, The Marmalade Diaries for KWMR.org our community radio station in Point Reyes California, and he agreed.
"Dear, oh dear" muttered the new King, Charles 111, as he greeted Liz Truss at Buckingham Palace only two weeks ago. The double doors were swung open by a liveried equerry announcing "Prime Minister - Your Majesty”. Ms Truss bobbed forward to shake hands with the King, and said, ”Your Majesty, great to see you again," The King smiled as he replied "Back again?” - “Well come along then,” he may have continued - but we missed that bit as, like a patient headmaster, he led the not quite settled in new Prime Minister into another room. Last week - as I began to unpack in Rome - she was back. “Oh dear oh dear.” The King may have said - again.
It has barely been three weeks since September 6th, when a rumpled Prime Minister Johnson arrived at the Balmoral Castle gates to hand in his card at 11 a.m. In quick succession he was followed by the tight-skirted Truss. It was a long morning for our Queen, and for those watching with concern - seeing the Queen holding onto a stick with one hand while smiling and extending the other used and bruised hand, to Liz Truss.
The sky is cloudy and dull, pouting at being left behind in grey England while these two politicians vie for the Conservative leadership. The chambers of the House of Commons sit empty as ministers flee the city, following the example of their old boss Boris Johnson, who took his family off to Greece for the holiday month of August.
It was here, the heat wave, the amber warning turning to red and the temperatures rose to over 101º. Downstairs in our little cottage the bedroom, study and bathrooms are cool - and we are grateful. Upstairs, in the open-spaced living area the curtains are drawn as in my childhood when the temperature first climbed into the 70s and then, in 1976 to the low-80s. My mother’s curtains were heavy, chintz, and lined, a hold-over from black-out curtains used during the last war, with a thickness for keeping heat in during the winter. As we slide into climate change, heavy curtains are now used for cooling.
Boris and his other buds are changing their minds at least every week as to what Covid restrictions will stay in place – not too many – if he can help it – as the country relies more heavily on vaccinations. The economy is leading the agenda – again.
The Taliban say that women and girls will have full rights ‘under Islamic law’ but Islamic law, like any other law, is subject to interpretation and already new rules about dress and education leave many women and their families fearfull. Such strict laws preclude many women from the problems that beset women from other countries and, as has been recently seen – states such as Texas.
And here, now, in England, the stone sits so solidly at the bottom of the hill. There is no Atlas among our politicians to roll the stone of the world’s troubles back up to a more compassionate civilization.
Tony Blair wearing the wise elder-statesman look with slightly too-long silver hair as he shakes his head smiling ruefully, ‘Why can’t you pull yourselves out of the hole I dug for you?’
A Dereliction of Duty “On an extraordinary scale”, said Major Gen Charlie Herbert, who served three tours in Afghanistan between 2007-2018. “It is almost impossible to believe that the Prime Minister departed on holiday on Saturday; he should hang his head in shame.”
Tonight, as the church bells signal the end of evensong we will go to sleep for one more night in this little cottage.
Radio men and women artists shine a singular light. Reaching only our auditory perception, they bring story, drama, music and memory along with companionship to their audience in the fullest of our imagination.
The government is to give National Health medical staff a 3% pay rise. The question remains are the nurses too worn out to consider a some kind of action?
My Mother had a saying when I was a teenager. “It’s not do as I do it is do as I say,” teaching me that not all adults were to be trusted. It was a common enough phrase for those times.
The onus of responsibility is now ‘over to you,’ that is us. But as we have sadly seen demonstrated this weekend, the onus of responsibility for self and community care is a mantle tossed aside by many of England’s populace.