When I walked up and over the hill to the Saturday’s farmers markets in the play-yard of St. Paul’s School on Primrose Hill Road I took a detour to a stand of shrubs that has been left to grow on the hill. The outer tresses are vines of sweet and plump blackberries, and I have a small container-full before I head down the back side of the hill into the market. Volunteers are still at the gates, watching who goes in, helping with a queue if necessary, and giving us all a squish of hand sanitizer as we enter the school yard.

What is it about markets? We gather at them as at an oasis for life. A community without such a market feels depleted in a deep way. There is rejoicing when a new market is established and a sadness when one dies.

It was probably in the early 1980’s when my mother first said “Come on Saturday and we can go to the market.” There was now a weekly market set up in the Ghurka Square parking lot of the Fleet town library. There were stands selling tools, some of which definitely looked as if they had fallen off the back of a lorry. There were stalls of fruit, vegetables and a small garden shop with its racks of plants, all of whom my mother would barter with, much to my embarrassment, but not to hers. The stall owners knew that they would lose nothing in giving her a bob or two off, and she would happily be back to shop with them again the following Saturday. The butcher and fishmonger, Mr. Driver and Mr. Harden, both taking over from their fathers, brought vans to the market to sell fish and any game that had come their way during the week. Being on the edge of farmland and the countryside there would be plenty of pheasant, rabbit and hare, in season or not. My mother would meet old friends, and though it was no longer the genteel coffee house moments of Mrs. Max’s Cafe it was another way to say hello and check in with each other.

These early markets had a flair of the fair about them, with the sharpness and quickness of traveling people. It was a racy flavor not usually found in the quiet suburbs but one I came to know in the old Inverness Street market in Camden. Now we have the Primrose Hill Saturday produce market and it suits us as I can chat with the organic farmers from Kent and beyond.

Who holds the keys to markets? For there always is a gate keeper, and not all are as amiable as the volunteers with their hand sanitizer at the St. Paul’s schoolyard entrance. What is it you have to sell and who you might serve or upset plays a part in selling pheasants or films.

The arts, and culture, are being particularly challenged within this Covid-19 crisis situation. The film business is hopping up and down, deals are being struck, contracts withdrawn, to produce, not to produce, to screen, not to screen and Coup 53 which was ready for release at the end of 2019 has been caught in the middle of this jammed water-way and was close to drowning in the river mill-stones along the road to distribution. But Todd McCarthy wondered in his article in Deadline if there was more going on with this film? He writes “At a moment in time when documentaries are in greater favor, and more widely accessible to the public than ever before, it’s both disturbing and ironic that the most enthralling and revelatory documentary I’ve seen over the past year hasn’t yet found a clear path to the public.”

There could be many reasons why mainstream streaming and cinema art-houses have not picked the film up yet for their own pockets. Is the truth of the UK and US involvement in the take-down of Iran’s democratically elected Prime Minister Mossadegh too hot a topic at this time? It could seem that this is so.

Now the film makers have joined a new venue of online viewing. Using the streaming platform eventive.org, Coup 53 will be released in several countries and continents on August 19th and be available for viewing for several weeks thereafter. I don’t actually know how it works but I do know it involves virtual cinemas which are set up by cinemas and other parent organizations, such as KWMR.org. Another leap into the unknown for these film makers, enticing the truth-seeking and curious audience to follow. The newspaper press have already begun writing their stories and in the weeks to come there will be more. In the Sunday Observer newspaper a full page article on Coup 53 has pushed Boris Johnson off of page three onto page five, and Steve Bannon onto page seven.

U-turns and unclear explanations have led to endless chaos and a painful week for Boris Johnson. Even the Honors list has heads spinning and thinking of the saying “Keep you friends close but your enemies closer.” The list of knighthoods and peerages bulges and instead of ‘Off with their heads’, the House of Lords will now be crammed with 800 Lords and Ladies of the Realm. Maybe our Queen can delegate this investiture to Prince Charles who has a swift and steady hand with a sword. Who has been ushered upstairs? One is the cricket hero Sir Ian Botham, who was a staunch Brexiteer. Brother Jo Johnson is moved out of harm’s way into the House of Lords. Philip May, husband of ex-prime minister Theresa May for “political Service” by just getting his wife out of the door of Number 10 and into the limousine during her time in office. And let’s not forget a nice Russian. Mr. Lebedev, whose dad, since we were talking of spies, was a former KGB agent. Now Mr. Lebedev owns the Independent and Evening Standard newspapers – and has been a good friend of Mr Johnson’s. All of this announced on the second day of August when parliament is no longer sitting.

They have gone on holiday. Fewer ministers will travel overseas, but may be seen in shorts and sun-screen licking an ice lolly at a fete in their own constituencies throughout the country. Let’s hope they have plenty of sun-screen, for the temperature is about to get hotter.

This has been A Letter From A. Broad. Written and read for you by Muriel Murch.