The tail winds bring the plane into London fifteen minutes early and so we circle the city, sometimes dipping low over Windsor Great Park then rising over Queen Alexandra’s Palace before eventually fitting into our designated time slot – diving down and bump, bump, bumping to the runway. The afternoon sun is shining brightly by the time we pile into a taxi. 

“We have a lot of luggage.” “Sit yourselves down and I’ll pack it around you.” and with that instruction and in charge tone we are welcomed back. The traffic is light as between a waitress shift – after lunch and before dinner – as we head out around the roundabout onto the M4 Motorway which is still bordered by the scruffy fields holding a couple of caravans and the travelers piebald ponies half-hidden by the tall hawthorne hedgerows that are coming into leaf. The motorway dips to the city, passing the hat-tip of industry and settling onto the highly packed houses of Hounslow and Acton. The grass verges are left un-mowed, the dead daffodil blossoms are allowed to recede into the soil for next year. Dandelions take this opportunity to stand up and offer their yellow heads to the emerging bumble bees, and for a moment before the council can attack there is harmony in these narrow strips of roadside grass. This road into the city is deeply familiar and, bathed in the afternoon the sunlight, is welcoming. Turning the corner onto Prince Albert’s Terrace I see the newly worked hawthorne is sprouting as the bent branches form a hedge tough enough for sheep and cattle, and well able to hold the children climbing and swinging in the playground. Tired as we are the sight lifts our spirits. Sunlight can do that.

Our in-charge taxi driver sets about unloading all the luggage, knowing that small as our home is there will be a big tip. We are grateful for his help and unlocking the door we are even more grateful to enter our clean and welcoming cottage. It is small, and for now a safe haven from that world we have left.

We make it to the first evening, turning on the BBC news and to our dismay find that far from having left it, the American political scene is playing out on our screens. I have to remember that the same scene is being played out on news channels across the world in different languages – both verbal and body – as the news-casters try their utmost to report the news of American tariffs on their and other countries. Reeta Chakrabarti can hardly keep a straight face as she reports on the pending cutting down of the nearly 200 year old Magnolia Tree on the White House south lawn. It was planted by Andrew Jackson to honor the memory of his late wife, who died before he took office in 1829. The current US president said that wood from the tree, known as the Jackson Magnolia, will be used for “Other high and noble purposes”. He went on to say the tree was a safety concern and would be replaced by another ‘very beautiful tree’. I tend to worry when this US president uses the word ‘very’ – as in very beautiful, very nasty, very bad. And saddened that a tree, with such history is being killed on a whim.

Reeta then took a deep breath as the news continued with the American President holding up boards with columns and numbers – this is, after all, a business meeting presentation, though his hair is too slicked down at the sides leaving the sparse top fluffing in the wind, showing where tariffs would be imposed when the scene suddenly cuts away – shifting from the President holding up his board to the Norfolk Island Penguins, who presumably have just seen it –  waddling along as fast as they can, no doubt worrying about the 10% tariffs being imposed on their guano that is carried out to sea. Heard Island and McDonald Islands, which form an external territory of Australia, are among the remotest places on Earth, accessible only via a two-week boat voyage from Perth in Australia. Anthony Albanese, the Australian Prime Minister, was as surprised as the penguins by the announcement saying “Nowhere on Earth is safe.” 

And I wonder about that. Even if everything was reversed, right now this minute, lives have been altered, some destroyed, there is more than one death that can be attributed to the maniacal behaviour coming from Washington D.C. 

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.

We have been back almost a week and still every night the President is front and center of the newscasts. The protests that we know are happening all over the American coastlines get very little coverage. Each country is more concerned with this storm across the global markets and has little time or energy to think of the American people who voted for or against this President. The Universities, medical research, the arts and even in the heartland farmers will feel the swish of his scythe. 

The Israeli Prime Minister popped into to Washington for a visit. The two men sat at the head of a table, which holds a large model plane that looks to be waiting for one of them to pick it up and run around the room playing like a five-year-old, making whoosh plane noises as they dive bomb the nodding heads, sitting suited in uniform, turned to face their leaders. Maybe this is where the plane turns and lifts off, flying beyond America hovering over China, Europe and Iran, spoiling for a fight with real blood.

Poor Sir Keir Starmer looks out of his depth as he goes out to meet the people and leaders in UK industry. Yesterday he was at the Jaguar Land Rover factory, a heavyweight plant of Industry whose CEO, Adrian Mardell, has said they are pausing exports to the US for a month. He is giving Starmer time to do something but Sir Keir’s earnestness is not very convincing and Rachael Reeves is getting shrill – never a good sign.

On our first full day we walk up the Broadwalk in Regent’s Park, determined to see the cherry trees in bloom. The air is warm but the wind is strong and early falling petals carpet the road. People of all ages, colors and persuasions have come to admire and to take pictures of the young trees. We have watched them since their planting and now in their three-year-old adolescence they are giving us courage while bringing joy with their beauty. May it always be so.

Regent’s Park Cherry Trees in bloom

This has been A Letter from A. Broad. Written and read for you by Muriel Murch, and as always supported by murchstudio.com