Let’s Talk About It.

September 20, 2025 / aggiemurch / 1 Comment

Written and Read for you by Muriel Murch with WSM by my side

Several elephants go around and around a circus ring, trunk to tail, holding onto each other, scared to let go and be separated from the herd. But the elephant trainer cracks his whip calling one to the center and perform a special trick. Lets call this elephant Charlie. Charlie is a good elephant, mature, smart, and expressive as he performs his trick and is well rewarded. Until one day something bad happens to Charlie and the show is disrupted.

Ringling Bros and Barnum & Bailey Combined Circus : 5 big herds of performing elephants in 5 circus rings at one time by Boston Public Library

We, the audience, take in this pause, viewing it all around, from one side of the arena to the other. There are few clues in the circus program notes to see what will happen next. We all find different truths for what has happened and we talk to each other following a clip, with no date, on the internet showing Charlie Kirk, answering questions from a woman, “What are you doing, what is the point?” is met by “ … When people stop talking, that’s when you get violence…” And we don’t want to see the elephants stampede. But there is little footage of him engaging with students. He tosses out unsupported statements in his strong, intimidating voice, cowering students not versed in the skills of debate. I sadly find such old-world prejudices that it is hard to believe an educated young man could hold them such as this comment on race from his show on January 23 rd 2024

“If I see a Black pilot, I’m going to be like, boy, I hope he’s qualified.”

In the 1990’s, while exploring books and authors for radio broadcast, I slipped into a rabbit hole of the writing of Saint Exupéry. At the same time a new friend, George Nixon, came into our lives. George was among the very first African-American Pilots on a commercial airline, and a captain for United Airlines. He was being recruited onto the board of directors for the Full Circle Program. George was definitely feeling like a duck out of water and knew that the board was eager for him to join as the token black man. George was back-peddling until we got taking and he realized that like Heather, his wife, I was English, and could see I was as itchy at board meetings as he was. George had also become the United Airlines poster boy encouraging us to ‘Fly the Friendly Skies of United.’ When he told Heather he was going to try out for the video she immediately replied, “Oh don’t be so silly George, you are far too black.” But George, with his ‘I don’t give a damn’ attitude went for it. And got it. His blue-black face was seen up and down the freeways in and out of San Fransisco with his smile grinning down to the commuters as he dared other young African Americans to reach for their dreams.

Now with my rabbit hole search into aviation, and the writings of Saint Exupéry, I also had a pilot pal with which to explore the friendly skies. Once I flew on a night flight with George from San Fransisco to Boston with a plane load of flatulent first class fellows. I was excited and awake all through the night watching America unfold underneath the plane, until that moment that she didn’t. The hum of the engine was constant as I looked out of the window to see no lights below but only the stars ahead, not even really above us, just there in the night sky. Later, when we sat down together and I turned on the tape recorder we talked about his yearning to fly, I asked about the night sky that I had seen, talking about how Saint Exupéry flew by the stars.

“The stars,” said George, “The stars are my friends.” It is over thirty years since we had that conversation. I wonder how many pilots today still know where they are in the world by following the stars in the night sky. George retired in 1995 and with Heather moved to Tasmania at ‘Blackman’s Cove’ “Only you George, could do that,” laughed Heather and I in chorus. He stayed close to the edge, facing the ocean as he wondered what ahead for him.

It’s well into September now and there are storms coming in from the Atlantic ocean and tumbling over the Welsh hillsides on into the home countries. The winds are squally and the rain spits like a disgruntled snake. This is not a good day for landing a plane at Stanstead as the American President arrives for his second state visit which has been planned out very carefully to suit his tastes. As we work, the US President’s helicopters have just left the US residence in Regent’s Park, flying on their way to Windsor Castle. There will be soldiers standing with a guard of honor on the lawns before a carriage ride around the grounds, and inside in the evening a gold-plated meal – all within the safety of the castle keep. Hopefully the King will be wrapped up warmly and not catch cold.

The King gives his speech after the State banquet. From the Independent news paper

On Thursday the US President will leave Windsor for Chequers where the prime minister will have another guard of Honor – this time a band of bag pipers. There are Churchill’s archives to view, if not read, before getting down to the business of deal-making with the leaders of GSK, Microsoft and Rolls-Royce. Meanwhile Melania will linger with the queen viewing the Windsor Royal Library along with Queen Mary’s Doll’s House. By the time the President and his wife leave they will have seen very little of the people’s displeasure at their feet on our soil.

Friends on the Castle Tower from UTube and The Guardian.

The Trump Baby blimp rises over London’s Parliament Square (in 2018) by Michael Reeve

On Saturday over a 150,000 people came to London joining a far-right street-protest. Billed as a festival of Free speech, Tommy Robinson then eased his people through into racial conspiracies and Anti – Muslim hate speech. Having Elon Musk dialed in on the big screen was not that attractive as he railed against the “woke mind virus” and told the crowd that “violence is coming” and that “you either fight back or you die”. It didn’t sound much like Charlie Kirk’s suggestion to talk about it.

This morning the recycle truck came roaring down the street. The four lads jumped out, and jogging to the pavement, rolled the carts up to the lorry to chuck-in the recycling. The men are quick, laughing, shouting and getting on with it. I stand at our door with my bucket of compost, “Am I too late,” “No Aggie you’re fine, give it ‘ere.” And Nick takes my little bucket of compost and tosses it into the truck’s container. “How’ve you ‘bin Aggie?” “All right, and you?” “I’m retiring in two years Aggie.” “NO. You’re too young.” “I’m 64.” “No, you can’t be.” “I’m 82.” “No, Not a day over 42.” And he gives me an appraising look, as I stand there on the door step in my PJs and not a bit of uplift underneath. Back in the house after this early morning banter, I’m smiling. If Nick and I were having a pub-time drink we would undoubtedly be sharing very different views about the worlds we live in. But we would talk and laugh together and buy just one more round.

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

And as always supported by https://www.murchstudio.com

It’s Only Going to Get Worse

September 9, 2025 / aggiemurch

Written and read for you by Muriel Murch with WSM by my side

“The next time you do this lady, you’re going downtown.” He was big, beefy and, even from behind his counter desk, threatening, as he leaned forward into my space. Was it my space? The flight back to San Francisco had been full and fraught. Wearing my very nice Irish tweed suit (How I wish I could fit into it now) and my pearls, was usually enough to let me sail through customs and immigration when returning to the United States. Since 2000, I had been commuting back and forth to England taking care of my mother as best I could as Congestive Heart Failure quietly worked its way, taking its toll, through her body. She never complained about the distresses and frustrations and even fear it caused her through the three plus years of her illness. But this was 2003, two years after 9/11 and the ante had been upped. I was shaken as he slapped my green card and English passport down on the counter and passed them back to me. I hurried away from this glowering man in his booth before he had beckoned the next person standing in line forward for his scrutiny.

Soon after, I was safely back on the farm a close neighbor stopped by. I was still so shaken I told him, I was telling everyone, what had happened. And he replied,

“Bill’s sister works in Washington. Would you like me to ask him to ask her what is going on?”

“Yes please,” I replied. He left shortly and it was only two hours later that he phoned me back. The advice from Washington was:

“Have her do her paperwork now. It is only going to get worse”. I heeded her advice reluctantly and over the next two years finished the required paperwork and took my tests, before finally stepping into the Hall of Justice in San Fransisco to stand and swear. It was a sobering moment, not only for me and hundreds of others, but watching those young people in military uniforms finally reaping the rewards of their service.

NAS SIGONELLA (July 20, 2010) – Candidates for American citizenship representing eight countries, raise their right hand and recite the Oath of Allegiance during a citizenship ceremony held here July 20. Eleven candidates participated in the ceremony to become U.S. Citizens. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 1st Class Erica R. Gardner/RELEASED).

Our daughter Beatrice took her work break to meet me and, over a sort of celebratory lunch, helped me fill in my voter registration papers. Now I could vote, and, as importantly, protest the death penalty outside of prisons without fear of deportation. I can count myself among the lucky ones, and privileged to be so. 22 years later ‘it’ has indeed proved to be so much worse than we could ever have imagined and those not so lucky, not so privileged, are living in fear while some are paying a terrible price with the regime in power as they make their bids for a better life and freedom for their families.

We have to dig deep into the news to follow the paths of the American government’s lawlessness, and when we do it is sickening beyond belief. We don’t really know where to turn. The world is boiling over with the gastric disturbances of climate change amid the constant eruptions of war and destruction.

A not so small incident happened this week as Ursula Von der Leyen’s plane to Bulgaria was left circling for an hour while the satellite navigation system system was jammed. “Nothing to do with us,’ said the Kremlin spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, “Your information is incorrect.” While Mark Rutte, Nato’s secretary general, said they are working night and day to make sure this does’t happen again, I’m not putting money on their being successful.

And so the wars’ effects spread, across continents, each one oozing out to the other, Europe, The Middle East, and beyond. When the American President isn’t pouting that he has not been invited to China, he is busy plotting what he is going to do with Gaza when it finally becomes available. But what is it? Gaza, The West Bank, Palestine? Well that rather depends who you are talking with. President Macron calls it all Palestine, other European leaders are set to agree while BiBi Netanyahu calls it Gaza and The West Bank trying to keep Palestine even more separate.The American President calls it Beach Site property.

Israel continues to bomb Gaza, targeting hospitals and journalists.

The Committee to protect journalists says that to date at least 189 journalists and media workers have been killed in Gaza in the most deadly conflict for journalists ever recorded. As we watch the nightly news, the lead anchor for that evening repeats, “Israel does not allow foreign media to film in Gaza and so this footage comes from, dot, dot, dot. “ Whoever can record it” Bolex cameras have given way to smart phones and the footage is shared across the world aired by which ever country chooses to show it.

Dusk on the street – Auntie (The BBC) is tucked safely behind the church

On Tuesday we found ourselves at the entrance to the BBC headquarters in London. It has been twenty years since I first popped in to watch an interview. Yellow-jacketed security personnell man the paths winding between the barriers which go up and down and are moved around as rumours cross the courtyards to other waiting press and protesters who are always present. We have an appointment and are let in, then directed to more security. It’s a tight ship or a giant warhorse depending on your focus for the day. Eventually wearing our guest passes – clearly visible please – we pass through more guarded glass doors and look down on the huge buzzing news room below. Though brightly lit, it is somewhat spooky, the below aspect of it, as if a design relic of old wartime bunkers. Now instead of long tables with maps there are rows of computer hubs catching news from around the world, some of it coming from those phones that are held up in Gaza, in Kiev, in Afghanistan, but rarely the Sudan or even Haiti. No photographs are allowed here either and the security remains visible as we make our way through the warren of lifts and corridors and messy drink alcoves that look like they belong on a train until we reach a recording suite. There is enough gear to make a community-radio head swoon except that I understand that though they have the equipment, the personnel and money, community radio has a greater freedom.

Two guests, one host, one producer, one engeneer. Be still my lustful heart.

It’s a straight forward forty-five minutes of book talk for Walter, another guest and the host before heading to the bar for drinks. Fully back from the Covid year, the space is loud, raucous and liquid and the cider is not bad. The men and women crews gathered here are grateful to do the good work that they can.

Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping stand together

I watch the evening news with a slightly different take, looking for what is chosen and what is not. Russia keeps on bombing Ukraine. There are no talks of peace in any of these war zones. A new world order gathers for a military parade in Beijing as Xi Jinping hosts China’s largest-ever military parade, with Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong-un, standing and almost smiling in a show of defiance to the West. The American President and other Western and European leaders were not in attendance.

Though notably absent from our newscasts for the last few days, the American president immediately posted a petulant response, an embarrassment to even some of his supporters. As speculation abounds a diagnosis of Chronic Venous Insufficiency has been given. Similar in presentation and outcome as varicose veins, he may find them as useful today as a little bone spur was 60 years ago.

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

As always supported by https://www.murchstudio.com

August in LA

August 23, 2025August 23, 2025 / aggiemurch / 3 Comments

Written and read for you by Muriel Murch with WSM by my side

August is a hard month for California. The sun sears down on the land that slides out from underneath the mountain ranges towards the sea. Only the water cascading down from the mountains and channeled into the fertile fields below brings relief and wealth, and the sense that all is as it should be. But looking closely, cracks are beginning to emerge. The eruptions of wealth, from early settler gold diggers in the Northern Hills, to the tech innovators in Silicon Valley playing their chips, surge and wane while those other essential and lucrative industries of agriculture and cinematic art are holding on, even as they feel the the claws of federal predators stretch and contract, preparing to strike at this strength and wealth while waiting until other, bigger fish for the moment, are fried.

The plane from London touches down at LA International. Not sure what to expect we are amazed at the ease of facing a camera before the gates are opened into the United States. Collecting our bags, we too are collected by our driver. We are exhausted but Bruno, an Angeleno, born and bred, with his own faded dreams has a lot to tell us and we listen as best we can. Depending on the time of day and day of the week each driver has their preferred route. Today we are driven to Beverly Hills on Sepulveda Avenue. The Avenue is large, even by old Los Angeles standards, dusty, dry and worn, laid down before the freeways had been dug out and around snaking through this city ever hungry for more traffic with seven lanes each way, at times barely able to contain the flow of cars.

Entering The Four Seasons Hotel, the bright lights of the chandeliers beam down on the vast urns of gladioli denying the suffering outside. The following night we leave for the Apple Pan – open from 11 to 11 – on West Pico Boulevard, serving the same menu since 1947. It’s interesting to see Uber drivers from different cities, how they adapt to their city, get a job a gig and somehow make it all work – for a while. For we are all aware, both passengers and drivers how precarious is the American world today. We have paid homage to The Apple Pan since the 1960s, growing older along with Manny on the left wing, and Gordi on the right, of the big horseshoe-shaped counter that surrounds the deep friers and fronts the cavernous kitchen behind. Manny and Gordi began as young counter-boys about the time we first motorcycled into Los Angeles in 1965. They have both retired, but we continue to come, showing our children this tradition whenever we are in Los Angles together. Three kinds of burgers and four sandwiches make up the main menu with a generous helping of french fries. Flipping the menu over to deserts, only the Fresh Apple and Pecan pies are not cream pies – the rest are cholesterol heaven. You want Ice Cream? That will be double Dutch Vanilla.

Entering The Apple Pan is like entering a cave. For awhile, the beat and heat of the outside world is left behind. Even if your truck-driving is more limousine laden than diesel loaded, this is trucker heaven. We come to decompress, to speak and be spoken to kindly, it is almost holy. In years gone by West Pico was bright with shining mall lights, the intersection humming with life but now the outside street is dark and bare. Swaths of real estate have been shuttered, the lights turned off, only the blinking of a few cars and hissing busses pass by. It has taken me two days to find the right word for this Los Angles – it is – desolate. America does not seem so great again.

Julius Tennon, Viola Davis, Walter Murch

The week ahead holds a busy schedule. Along with Viola Davis, Walter received an Honorary Doctorate from the American Film Institute. Each of them, a power-house within their spheres, spoke passionately from within their disciplines and I wonder what the graduates made of them both.

For a morning, because it is a graduation with new beginnings for young artists, there is hope and relief in the air. And laughter as when we stop in at the post-event brunch and the faculty head of editorial asked me,

“Are you?”

“Yes.”

and laughter

“You’re famous in Hollywood. You must have the patience of a saint.”

And there is more laughter.

We connect with the friends that we can. There are friends too sick to visit, there are friends who have put their homes back together after the Palasades fires, and friends who are only just beginning. These are the precious moments.

And then the work. ‘Suddenly Something Clicked’ is clicking along. The buzz around its publication is moving quickly through the Los Angles Post Production community and at the same time ‘Harvesting History’ is having its own quieter moment.

Randal Kleiser and WSM are listening – along with a standing room only audience.

Randal Kleiser led us both through our books at Chevalier’s Book Store in Larchmont before Lawrence Weschler puppeteered Murch at The Hammer Museum and the following night Murch just carried on determined to expose as many minds as possible – in another packed house at the Pasadena College of Art and Design – to his exploration of the Golden Ratio of the human face and its relation to cinema. He’s almost come up with an answer, but an absolute answer that might hold truth in logic would perhaps disperse the magic. And what is the magic of these days for these film makers? Maybe the fact that someone is thinking about and able to articulate what they hardly know goes on in their own minds. “Oh that is what I am doing, that is what is happening.” There is hope and validation and even a good dose of courage to be gained by listening.

We are lacking the stamina that is needed for such a full adventure and were felled with summer colds that descended like thick fog and hovered on the brink of bronchitis. Walter was downed early, checked out and prescribed a broad antibiotic by the brisk 60 year young hotel house doctor. I fall at the end, somehow packing and flying until we reach the safety of our London cottage. I wail that I want Doctor Joe, with his gentle chuckling care and beloved Mo with her Chicken soup.

The saving grace of illness is that it was two nights before we are able to manage the world news, Gazas rubble and carnage taking third billing to the immigration rows and the slow bizarre meeting of The American President with Vladimir Putin in Alaska followed by the European Leaders ‘Coalition of the Willing’ in Washington DC. There is the news, and the the body language, and maybe some fake AI unfurling as this madness of the about turns of this play out in unreal time. Sifting through the lies and the truths, the temptings and concessions, the breath-holding is reminiscent of a mother feeding a toddler with a buzzing airplane spoonful of spinach maybe to be spat out in a rage or grasped and swallowed looking for the prize of peace.

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

As always supported by murchstudio.com

Dining Out

July 26, 2025 / aggiemurch / 6 Comments

Written and read for you by Muriel Murch with WSM by my side

I was nervous that he wouldn’t like it – and might get grumpy at the thought of going to Veeraswamy’s Restaurant on Swallow Street, the site of our first date 61 and 1/2 years ago. Veeraswarmy’s has been tucked into this little street, changing ever so slightly but ever so cleverly in style and food for its 99 years and remains the leader in Haute cuisine of Indian food. I need not have worried: he was happy and relaxed as we sipped their modern day cocktails, a Wimbledon Pimms for him, and Kir Royal for me while we enjoyed reading the menu.

“We sat over there,” we remembered, smiling while looking at the little table tucked in a corner while thinking back on that time. And that we had returned for Walter’s 60th birthday party. Now is is just us again, and he is 82.

Veeraswamy’s Restaurant, Swallow Street, Piccadilly

Though we were dining early, the restaurant was filling up. A younger couple was seated beside us and as we smiled at each other I blurted out – because that is what I do – that we had our first date here 61 years ago and we were here for my husband’s Birthday. “Us too” the woman replied. We were both dressed specially for this evening out for our menfolk. She wore a black fitting maxi dress with an assortment of gold necklaces. Her diamonds were expensive and this evening was her treat to him. After our meals were eaten both tables were served with the obligatory delicious chocolate birthday deserts. We smiled again.

“How old are you?” I asked,

“40” He replied and I looked at him again.

“Where are you from?”

“From Florida. She’s on a work trip.” (Not ‘my wife’ but ‘she’.) And again because I truly can’t help it – I laughed and said:

“Florida, I could never go to Florida, the alligators frighten me.” And then even before I had finished speaking, my awareness shifted and my prejudices immediately leapt into my imagination – they are from ‘that’ Florida and ‘She’ is on a reconnaissance trip for the American invasion that is about to happen this summer. I felt my heart freeze. The birthday gentlemen finished their chocolate cake with just the smallest help from the wives. As the last forkful was finished she learnt over to me and said,

“Can I ask you?” Of course, “We have a two-year old at home and apart from Paddington Bear what else could I bring her?” Ah, now I was on home Granny ground and launched into the thrills of “Ant and Bee,” showing her the books on her phone. And even as I explained:

“They are different, but friends, you see.” I wondered if that idea would sit comfortably with her – different but friends. The conversation quickly went to families, they are both from large families with lots of siblings, and were worried about raising an only child. She was hungry for any knowledge she could gleam from this obviously comfortable English Granny – who was also wearing the appropriate amount of bling. I told her which bookshops she could go to and even brought up.

‘Harvesting History while Farming the Flats’ on her phone before wondering if that might not be the wisest thing to have done.

They were staying in Mayfair which helped confirm my imagination of them here to prepare for the American political invasion that is coming to England this summer.

The American President starts his trip in Scotland where security will try to preclude the Mexican marching band that greeted him on his golf course a few years ago.

Paddy Power descended on Glasgow Prestwick Airport (? 2016) to greet US presidential hopeful and golfing entrepreneur Donald Trump with a live performance by a Mexican mariachi band, “Juan Direction”, armed with a wheelbarrow full of bricks

Meanwhile ‘Me too Me too’ cries JD Vance who does’t want to be left at home to take care of America and has taken a holiday home in Chipping Norton for his family and a month long summer break. But who is minding the shop, if DT is in Scotland before spending two nights at Windsor Castle -a stiff nightcap whiskey or two will be needed that weekend – and JD is in the Cotswolds? Security is going to be tight, there will be grumbling down at the pub and it is quite possible that more than one antique Ford Major tractor will trundle along spitting manure off of their tire tracks in front of the large black SUV’s that will incur scratches if they are not careful on those narrow country lanes. This is not going to be a happy time. What of the hidden politicians who take refuge in the Cotswolds? Will David Cameron have JD over for drinks, even Nigel Farrage? Will Boris lumber up from Oxford bringing his brood with him? It doesn’t look good. The country lanes are not the only pathways going to be blocked.

All this on top of June’s embarrassment when a handful of pro-Palestinian activists popped through a preexisting hole in the chain-link fence surrounding the Oxfordshire airbase and sprayed two RAF military planes with red paint. The Prime Minister, Sir Keir Starmer, said it was “disgraceful” and an “act of vandalism”.

Well of course it was. But whose grace was disrespected while the planes remained in working order? Not Palestine’s. Quickly a law was written and passed that support of the Palestine Action organization was now an act of terrorism.

So where does that leave someone like Mill Valley’s John the Waving Man from 2008, and now England’s 83-year-old Reverend Sue Parfitt, and Laura Murton.

John the Waving man to stop war. Mountain Road Mill Valley 2008

Nightly we see pale gruel, with a few floating vegetables scooped from big metal vats into small plastic containers held by old men, women and children while sacks of flour are hoisted onto the backs of young men just still strong enough to carry them as they scurry away zig zagging trying to avoid the bullets fired in panicked fear by young Israeli boy soldiers.

‘Please,’ begs one minister in Parliament ‘Can we acknowledge a Palestinian state while there is still a state to acknowledge?’ Last month, Emmanuel Macron addressed the English Parliament saying again that a two state solution was the only way to build stability in the region. It is unbelievable and heartbreaking that resistance still comes from the British government, though cracks are beginning in the less-united labour party. The UK foreign secretary, David Lammy, told the BBC that he felt appalled and sickened by the scenes of starving Palestinians being shot as they sought food.

“We said we wanted to be part of a process. But we have had no process. What we have had is mayhem and conflict. There has been no process to attach that recognition to.” The Newsnight numbers of dead are now given twofold: those killed by the shootings, and those dying of starvation.

This morning ants are coming into the kitchen through the open window. They have finished their meal of nasturtium-clinging aphids and are searching for fresh compost for dessert. A stray buddlia plant is blooming in the parking lot and a dozen or more butterflies are enjoying its nectar while the bees harvest from our fuchsia blossoms. As I prepare a breakfast of applesauce made with early windfalls from a friend’s country garden, I bow my head in gratitude and sorrow understanding that no windfall is falling yet on Palestine and its people.

This has been A Letter from A. Broad written and Read for you by Muriel Murch.

As always, supported by murchstudio.

Dress to Impress

July 13, 2025 / aggiemurch / 2 Comments

Written and read for you by Muriel Murch with WSM by my side

Dress to impress and dress for success, sometimes we try – but what does that mean – and for whom and for when are we dressing? This week I dressed for an appointment with a new doctor because I wanted him to see and receive me, and not to toss me off as another white 82 year old female with knee pain. So my fingernails were a playful bright green.

I may not be a spring chicken but I’m not ready to shuffle off with a walker just yet. I’m praying for a physical exam and an x-ray and a picture that would tell me what is going on with my knee and how can we fix it. It is 15 years since that knee was replaced and I’m aiming for at least another five. It looks like the green nail varnish worked and slipped this fast-talking professional fellow out of total keep-it-together efficiency to ask ‘So how tall are you’? and we laughed – before getting serious again and him telling me what the x-ray pictures showed. ‘Your knee is fine – your hip is worn out.’ Seems like another case of ‘rode hard and put away wet’. But I know to be beyond grateful. I am fortunate to have options in front of me and live a life where such care is accessible.

In countries that are at war, with themselves and each other, this is not so. The old, the infirm, the young and sick, are all vulnerable and frequently dying for and from the wars that ravage around them. Within the jungles of Myanmar, the city streets of Belarus and the open fields and villages of Ukraine, we are not privy to the unseen hardships played out in those lands. This week we watched ‘Gaza: Doctors Under Attack’ a documentary that was first commissioned by the BBC. Then, according to Stuart Heritage writing for The Guardian, “dropped due to the risk that it created “a perception of partiality”. Luckily Channel 4 picked it up and it is also now available on YouTube. Channel 4’s Louisa Compton warned that Doctors Under Attack would “make people angry, whichever side they take.” She is right. This is the sort of television that will never leave you. Maybe it can provoke an international reaction and we owe it to the people and the countries to not look away. And I don’t, instead finding images remain front and center in my mind making me think deeper about what is happening and how it is happening.

Mangos by JACQUELINE BRANDWAYN on Unsplash

A doctor, who has just lost members of his own family, kneels beside a bed shared by two staving children and asks the older boy fed with a gastric tube “What do you want, What would you like?” The boy whispers, “Mango, mango and grapes”. “And the doctor laughs gently with him, “Mangos and Grapes. You shall have them” while in his heart he knows that joy may have to wait for another life time. As he pats the boy, feigning reassurance he steadies himself against the weeping that is in his soul. And maybe we too must at the least bear witness to the horrors that are happening just around our global corner, as a less than five hours flight from London to Israel has become.

Some of the doctors followed in this film are still alive and working. Some are not. Almost all have been imprisoned, tortured and lost family members. The film follows a trajectory of sorts. It begins as hospitals are warned to evacuate – but there is nowhere for patients or staff to go. Then an air strike happens, causing more chaos and casualties among the patients and staff who remained. There is a final follow-through as the doctors homes and families are bombed before the attacks move onto the next hospital and repeat the format. Hospital buildings can be rebuilt – though it is doubtful that is the agenda here – but the taking out by imprisonment, torture and death of top medical personal leaves a hole in the knowledge of medicine that will take more than one decade to repair.

‘No water, no electricity’ … surgeons at work in Gaza: Doctors Under Attack. Photograph: Basement Films

Since the film was made last year, medical officials of all areas in Gaza are facing mass casualties and deaths of Palestinians wounded by Israeli fire as they scramble and fight for food. Relief aid distribution is now almost solely in the hands of The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, a US and Israel-backed organization, formed in February 2025, and now helmed by Johnnie Moore Jr of Delaware, an evangelical leader and businessman – which seems awfully close to Washington DC. In May the GHF took over from any organization sanctioned by the United Nations. I am not alone in feeling that this organization is disguising target practice as aid.

But we see very little of this on our daily evening news. Summer sports keep us happy, the heat waves keep us worrying, and we sigh at the incredible slowness of the government body inquiries into biggest miscarriage of Justice – the Post Office scandals – between 1999 and 2015 – finally come to a conclusion, exonerating those 900 sub-postmasters who were wrongly accused of masses of thefts, – the Horizon computers did it. 13 sub-postmasters committed suicide, many died of old age. The inquiry’s chair has begun to release the reports. Judge Sir Wyn Williams is a singing Welshman, president of Pendyrus Male Choir, which somehow makes one feel that he is a sensible fellow able to lead this committee walking through the dutiful steps to bring the officials to account, saying what needs to be said. It has taken a singing Welshman to steer this inquiry into publication.

After the relief of seeing this debortle coming to an end, we watched French President Macron toss the prickly ball of illegal immigration back and forth with Prime Minister Starmer in the House of Commons before they both enjoyed the perks of a State visit. President and Madame Macron’s State visit to Britain is the first of France, or indeed Europe, to England since Brexit. The final banquet, hosted by the King and Queen at Windsor Castle, brought out all the medals and sashes one could find, a tiara or two, good will and good manners to all, with proper speeches and – we hope – good French wine. A little brightness to end the day.

Sashes, medals and a Tiara but no green nail varnish

As censorship continues pulsing in with the tide of fear we must watch for rogue waves while the ripples over the sand show us where the truth is hiding, like clams under the sand sending up spouts of sea water, cleaning its breathing and screaming for life. But in England, coming down firmly in favour of censorship, protesting and supporting the pro-Palestinian, anti-Israeli activist group Palestine Action, has washed in another ruling under anti-terrorist laws as the government hurries to project its own agenda. There are spouts of truths in all the theaters of war and governments and while those in authority try so hard to hide them they continue to wash up on the shores of our consciousness.

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

Grateful to be supported by murchstudio.com/

Feet in the Fridge

June 29, 2025 / aggiemurch / 1 Comment

Writtten and read for you by Muriel Murch with WSM by my side.

Sally came back from across the street, “Granny Turriff has pulled up a chair and has her feet in the fridge.”

“Well that seems sensible. It is hot today.” replied her mother summing up the family consensus from their kitchen on the small street in the village where I grew up. The temperature must have reached the mid 70s at that time in the early 1950s. Granny Turriff was not my Granny, but she was one of the grannies who lived all around, in the house, or across the street at a time when families stayed close and watched out for each other. There was no air-conditioning then – maybe a breeze from an open back door would rise – stirring the still air – and putting your feet in the fridge was a pretty reasonable way for an elderly lady living alone to stay cool.

London Temperatures for Saturday June 28th

This last week with the heat wave now official – three days of temperatures above 30 degrees celsius, the mid-80s Fahrenheit – I’m remembering Granny Turriff as I open our fridge door to reach for the freshly made jug of iced tea and the cool air swirls out towards me. The temperature rests in the mid 80s and is 10 degrees hotter that when Granny Turriff put her feet in the fridge. Low level fridges are long gone so no one will see this piece of eccentricity – when practical might be considered just beyond sensible – and such actions could be judged as inappropriate behavior. There are warnings of the ‘extra’ deaths that this heatwave will bring to the vulnerable; the very young, the elderly and the infirm. The news details the pressures this will put on the already stressed health service and we, the very young, the elderly and the infirm, are advised to stay at home, rest and drink plenty of water. It is almost our duty to do so. We will keep the curtains and blinds drawn down to keep out the sun. We will water our plants in the evening time and we will rest.

The heat wave crosses Europe and given these times an almost manageable concern – what is it that puts global warming into manageable while Palestinian families are bombed, Ukraine battles on struggling to reclaim land stolen by Russia and now the mad man in American makes Dr. Strangelove look sane?

War, once again there is war. War for The United States of America is almost as big an industry as the entire US agricultural section. With these blasts, like aggressive bowel evacuations, of another attack on a sovereign country – whether one likes the regime or not – I look around searching for a place of reason. There are the “No Kings” demonstrations around the United States and even in Europe and other countries. The leaders of Canada, Mark Carney and Mexico, Claudia Sheinbaum cradle us in hope while the American Democratic party sits about pinging their phones and deleting emails. The American barrel of sanity looks pretty empty.

But this week, in a small organization, I found a firm steadfast remembrance of the horror of war.

Nurses, old, ofttimes retired are joined by young ones as they group together, state by state to form Nurses Honor Guards. The NHG now has over 300 chapters in all 50 states and continues to grow. Jeanie Bryner is a nurse, a friend, a poet and a power-house member of the Nurses Honor Guard of Eastern Ohio. When asked, the honor guards gathers to perform Nightingale Tribute services for nurses. Like in the military, it consists of the Final Call to Duty. The Nightingale Lamp is lit in the nurse’s honor and when a triangle is rung the nurse’s name is called out three times as a request to report to duty. With the last silence, after her name is called, the nurse is announced as retired and the lamp’s flame is extinguished. She is relieved from Duty.

Relieved from Duty Display from an Honor Guard.

Last week three chapters of the Nurses Honor Guard from Ohio took buses to Washington D.C. where they had been invited to place a wreath on the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. And that makes some kind of sense. The little I know, but something, from the strength of the grass-rooted down to earth poetry of Jeanie Bryner – the poetry of rural people, the patients, the nurses who care for them from the heartland of America – these are people who know the loss of war. It is probable that at least half of those women nurses have suffered some deep loss from the wars fought within their lifetimes – never mind their fathers before them. I found the video of the wreath laying ceremony on line – of course I did – and like so many at that ceremony there were tears in my eyes watching these nurses, there for their fellow fallen sisters and brothers, lovers and fathers.

Ohio Chapter of the Nurses Honor Guard at Arlington Washington D.C.

In 1995 Ohio State University published the first of a series of Anthologies on Nursing. ‘Between the Heartbeats Poetry and Prose by Nurses’ was edited by Judy Schaefer and Cortney Davis. As many of us as could traveled to Washington DC. where The American Nurses association was holding its annual meeting. But the ANA refused us permission to present or read at the convention. Instead we found a bookstore that took us in. I don’t remember how many other people came to that reading but we were an enthusiastic and proud group of nurse writers. As we gathered after the reading, mostly meeting each other for the first time, there was one nurse I particularly remember. Above her slacks she wore a brown, checked, gingham, short sleeved shirt. She had read her poem about Vietnam. We asked her if she had visited the new Vietnam Memorial wall. “Oh no.” She replied. “It is too soon.” In our silence we understood we would never know the horror she had witnessed. While the Ohio nurses gathered at the tomb of the unknown solder we all hold the world closer, praying for peace and the seeming unceasing wars to end.

This has been A Letter from A. Broad. written and read for you by Muriel Murch.

Always supported by https://murchstudio.com

Old Reads and New Writing

June 15, 2025 / aggiemurch

Written and Read for you by Muriel Murch

As dawn broke in years gone by, newspapers would be delivered by a bicycling schoolboy earning a few US dollars or English shillings. The papers were carefully gathered to be opened at breakfast, pages turned with American coffee or English tea – and toast. The news, the gossip, the sports – in green – before finally the cartoons and crossword puzzles were found on the final pages. Now those youngsters are out of a job as television and social media bring everything to us with a click of a button or a swipe of a forefinger. With a nine-year old grandson, I am having a refresher moment of comic book education. It is a good primer for what is playing out on the large and small screens in our hands.

The Cover of Leo Baxendale’s ‘A Very Funny Business’

The story lines are remarkably similar; a bully struts into the Oval Office with all his pals lined up behind him. A new boy comes in – quickly mocked for failing to be dressed the same as the bully and his pals. The new boy sits quietly, tries to reason with the bully and holds his own before leaving abruptly, as if chased from the room, but in reality he has left on his own terms. A few weeks later, the bully picks on another visitor. He too held his own with calm dignity. Now, weeks later, both of these men have achieved their aims. President Zelensky has demolished a third of the Russian bombers that were set to attack the Ukraine while, as South African President Cyril Ramaphosa left the White House, his smile reinforced for both black and white South Africans that his diplomacy skills are a strength the whole country is grateful for. This week the German Chancellor, Friedrich Merz, traveled to Washington DC to report back to the European Union. He too saw the symptoms of madness and stayed calm. As the rough-housing erupts in the White House we wait for the next installment to be drawn on the page.

While the comic book gets put aside – I find a gift tucked into my email inbox. A note from Barbara Bos who runs the Woman Writers, Women’s Books website would like a piece on the background of Harvesting History, While Farming the Flats and how I came to write it. This exercise is perfectly timed to answer a question that I pushed aside before it even had a chance to form. Did I answer her question? I’m not sure but this is some of what I wrote about that time in 2014.

It is midday. As many mornings as I can, I spend outside. Farm chores call out: ‘Over here, over here’ with raised wands of weeds, brambles and fences to care for. Fridays are sacrilegiously saved, even called ‘My Friday Farm days’. But I can only manage three morning hours before my body tells me to halt and I come back inside. Clean up, and enjoy a small snack before taking my place, sitting at the Bistro table, beside the French doors, in the main dining room.

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.

Journal books are on the table. The little blue one – whose innards I change each year – records the past day, the day today, and the things still to do. Lists abound in that book while very occasionally an Idea or Question is also captured. When the three pages of warm-up notes are completed like piano scales, the little blue book is put aside. Two bigger journals, also with soft covers, have big spaces and faint lines. I can only open these when I am alone, for the pen may find memories of its own, spilling its ink over the pages onto the table, and I am frightened that I cannot scoop them back again. My pens also are important. Somedays I pick and choose, wanting something different, possibly a useful pen, even a pencil, or a beautiful one with free flowing ink, gliding across the page like a superb dancing partner. I have a fountain pen, a gift we bought from Rome one Christmas for my mother and which she used for the rest of her life. Sometimes when I write with it, I feel my mother’s encouragement – now flowing more freely through that pen. Each entry begins as a letter to you, whoever and wherever you are, or even a chat, as if we were sitting side by side in a cafe.

Between the Heartbeats. Poetry and Prose by Nurses, edited by Cortney Davis and Judy Schaffer

I start writing like this, knowing that much of it will not find its way into the final piece. I accept that scribbling is OK, good, it is the compost, heating up the heart, trusting the practice, the craft that hones thoughts into words until they become uniquely mine. There is no final version – until maybe it is published and given to you – a reader. Writing becomes us, as slowly, one gathers a body of work behind one. I remember the first time that I received a postcard back from a Submission, (with a capital S) It was for Mr Tims Morning and Cortney Davis wrote on a card, “Thank you for this excellent work.” She probably wrote that on cards for all the work she and Judy Shaffer collected for their first Anthology of Nurse writing Between the Heartbeats. I still have that note.

Now, two books later, it happened again, Steve Wax had read some of my essays published in ‘The West Marin Review’, then, in a huge cinematic reunion sought me out to say, “I read your essays and they are beautiful”. And so the harvesting began again.

The isolation imposed by Covid and age, helped me turn inward in earnest as I carried those farm journals to London and old memories began to sit beside the farm memories from – well – memory. Only when the essays laid themselves alongside of each other, jostling back through the-time-before, like the loose and falling pages of old photo albums, which must – one day – all be digitized. But until that time I would write about – that – those – times, remembering them in words and stories. Sometimes the words rise like yeast-laden dough, as the memories crowded on the page become kneaded together with imagination.

What does it take to do that? Perseverance, putting the words on the page, taking them up again, moving them around before pushing them back down. There is a reason why in bread recipes we are instructed to knead the dough for 10 minutes until it is soft and silky under our hands. That is how we want our words to be, soft and silky, gliding along the page and into your imagination.

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

All Those Books

May 24, 2025 / aggiemurch / 2 Comments

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 accessible library is an ancient democratic idea, and for the destruction of democracy access to knowledge and art must be curtailed.

How much of a surprise was it then when on May 8th Carla Hayden received an email from the White House’s Presidential Personnel Office.

Carla Hayden as head of the Library of Congress

“Carla, On behalf of President Donald J. Trump, I am writing to inform you that your position as the Librarian of Congress is terminated effective immediately. Thank you for your service.” A spokesperson for the Library of Congress confirmed that the White House told Hayden she was dismissed. The reason given by the White House press secretary, Caroline Leavitt, was that Hayden ‘did not fit the needs of the American People’. Leavitt, a young and ambitious Republican, reminds me too much of Reese Witherspoon’s character in Alexander Payne’s 1999 film Election which follows Tracy Flick in her race for high school president in Omaha, Nebraska. Leavitt comes from New Hampshire and, like Tracy Flick, she too has learnt to use the media, adjusting her facts to suit a hoped-for narrative. Fact-checking at The Library of Congress is not likely to happen soon, for a culture war has begun and the Library of Congress, along with National Public Radio and other media are making fine early targets.

The Library of Congress was founded in 1800 and during the 1812 war burned by British troops. But precious documents had been saved and after the war ended, past-president Thomas Jefferson gave his own library to help restock all that was destroyed by the British on the condition that the library was to be free and accessible to all, sharing knowledge of the diversity and culture that already made up America. His library held copies of the Quran and Hebrew Bible which exposed Jefferson’s beliefs in the freedom of religions which was not then – as is not now – despite the pledge of allegiance – a universally-accepted truth in America. With the firing of Hayden this month we have a return to that history.

A lithograph of the Battle of New Orleans during the War of 1812.

At the moment there is a stand-off in which the Library Staff and their legal counsel have refused admittance to the President’s team without congressional approval. We hold our collective breath as the lasso circles around the Kennedy Center, National Public Radio, and libraries large and small.

In spring and autumn, this little community of Primrose Hill holds a festival of self. The main street is closed off. Vans are parked and stalls pitched on both sides of the road. Food stalls bring ethnic foods from all corners of London, hand-made boutique gifts are laid out under twinkling light, bright colored clothes hang high, swaying in the sunny breeze. Big ferris wheels and spinning teacups twirl around, flinging children up into the air with screams of delighted fear.

And after all that excitement almost everyone is in need of a bathroom, a cup of hot builder’s tea, cookies and a book. Then they pour into the library – which is strung with ancient bunting – which offers – cheaper than anywhere else – all of the above in their biannual Cake and Book sale.

For weeks leading up to this event, the library kitchen has been storing donated books. Like any community organization the kitchen becomes the store room – or the store room becomes the kitchen. We can hardly get in to haul out the books and begin sorting them into categories: history, fiction, non-fiction, biography, art, cookery, travel, children’s, philosophy, poetry and all else. Are there enough books to make plays and short stories a category? It’s a delightful dilemma. The days before the sale sees volunteers sorting, sifting books into crates with the aforementioned categories. On Saturday we admit partial failure, but on Sunday the full crates of books get hoisted onto the tables and, as the doors open and the first cups of tea are poured, we begin again in earnest. Every book is second-hand and priced at £1 except for the large and colorful cook-books, the only ones that are £2. They are interesting to wonder about. Which ones have been outgrown, or the families have developed other tastes. What is the story behind this almost perfect copy of ‘The Joy of Cooking’? Was there an illness in the family, was it given as a wedding present by a very old-fashioned aunt or did a divorce tear the fabric of that relationship before the first casserole came out of the oven?

Titles spring out, surprising, delighting and amazing us. A leather-bound copy of Mao’s Little Red Book, is tucked into self-help. There are two almost new copies of both Barack and Michelle Obama’s autobiographies. Obviously readable but a one-night stand and not save-able to take up so much space on the bookshelf.

People come in – in waves – and we watch who comes and what books they choose. An early-bird Muslim woman combs through the boxes. She picks out seven books, one on the destruction of Palestine and I slip out, “Oh good one” before offering to find her an old bag in the kitchen. I tote up her spendings, £1 a piece – that’s £7- “I want to make a donation to the library she says. “£3 to bring it to 10?” I ask. “No £50” she replies and I wonder at the price of, and gratitude for, kindness. Later another woman has ‘The Art of the Deal’ in her collection and I wonder out loud again (when will I learn to be quiet) “You’re buying that?” “I want to understand more.“ she replies. I pray for her compassion as I ask her if she has seen ‘The Apprentice’ film. ‘No’ she replies “But I will look for it after reading this.”

It’s a wonderful mixed crowd drawn from the community and beyond. A single gentleman spends at least an hour circling the crates before choosing one book. £1 changes hands and he disappears back into the crowd. But he just went to the cake stall for a cup of tea, a piece of cake and a sit-down at the round table. Half an hour later, refreshed, he is back and buys four more books. It is a good day for him. There are several single visitors, using this day, this time to be among other people – a kind of friendly cafe without any obligations – cozy and safe from the carnival atmosphere outside and the world beyond.

There are two lower tables filled with books for children, all within easy reach of little hands. Parents lean over too, choosing this or that book. A family comes bouncing in and the sisters pounce on two collections. “Daddy Please?” and their father is so happy that they want books he smiles his “Yes” to us all. Pregnant mothers sit down at the round communal table, sipping their hot tea resting for too-brief a moment, while their toddlers eat brownies and flit through the pages of their new-to-them purchase. Maureen and I take turns sweeping the floor.

This has been A Letter From A. Broad written and read for you by Muriel Murch with WSM by my side. Tech support by murchstudio.com

Half a Life-time Ago

May 10, 2025 / aggiemurch

Written and produced by Muriel Murch with WSM by my side

Forty-one years – half our life-time – ago we packed up our bags and the family and said goodbye to our home, leaving for two years in England to begin making ‘Return to Oz’ for Disney studios. In our inexperience and naiveté we didn’t know what was ahead for us or the film, and it was an intense two years full of more adventures than we had bargained for. We returned bruised but not broken though the film had a harder time of it. Abandoned by the studio whose revolving doors had spun executives in and out approximately every six months ‘Return to Oz’ was not given a good send-off as it was threaded up in cinemas around the country. Many years later Sydney Pollack, a film director, producer and friend, when battling the same issues with ‘The Talented Mr. Ripley’ said that “you can take an audience to hell and back, but you have to let them know where they are going.” Disney was not prepared to do that with Oz and neither was Paramount with Ripley. Both films felt the force of those non-decisions. But eventually both found their audiences and have a strong following to this day,

Return to Oz Poster by Drew Struzan that was never used.

On Saturday morning we were driven across London – never a smart thing to do on a Saturday morning – to the British Film Institute – on the South Bank of the Thames River. The driver dropped us off – as they do – somewhere in the back of the vast South Bank complex – and it took us awhile to find our way to the BFI entrance. We were late. ‘Return to Oz’ had already started, Dorothy had just found the key to Oz, showed it to Aunt Em and was about to be taken off to Dr. Worley’s. My friend Tansy as Toto was putting in a star performance. We were ushered to our seats in the back and as we slowly got used to the dark we saw that this large theatre was almost completely full of families and fans glued to the screen. They were laughing at the jokes, and following along, even staying silent and alert when the film froze as the projectionist missed the final breath-holding reel changeover. 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?”

Thames in spring – photo by Beatrice Murch

Eventually we left the BFI, going out into the bright sunlight and joined the weekend folks along the South Bank of the river. The tide was in, the wind was up and the tourists were thick, walking and pausing to see the street artists with their puppets, music, youthful energy and hope. Strolling along we were bemused and touched that the work of 41 years ago still lives in the minds and hearts of these families. Crossing the Westminster Bridge I thought of the Nome King’s destruction by a plucky girl, her Army, the Gump, a squishy pumpkin, a chicken and an egg. For this afternoon moment we were relieved of thinking of the current Nome King who is destroying the Oz of Frank Baum’s world and dreams, the new age of invention as it was then in America and continued to be – until this time.

It’s pretty steady, each and every day a new decree is published from the Emperor who – although despite falling asleep while wearing a blue suit at the Popes Funeral – seems not to have any other clothes. He is moving on, already bored with the finer details of making a deal with Ukraine’s President Zelensky – gouging out huge mineral reserves in exchange for a paper-thin promise of more weapons, a cease-fire with Russia and some small print saying which countriy’s mayors, Russia or the Ukraine, gets to sit on which city council. President Zelensky has signed away half of his countries mineral wealth to this US President, betting that he won’t last his full term and hoping that eventually some calmer heads might prevail. For the moment the word from one of many Ukrainian women who have sheltered in Europe, finding work where they can is that ‘We are running out of men’.

It is as if the US president is no longer content with the swing of his golfing driver but has taken to fishing, wading in over his knees as he casts his rod and line out into the waters. He is moving on from the river bank of Gaza – leaving his pal Benjamin Netanyahu to finish mopping up the remains of that invasion. Hamas will burrow deeper into the sands of the desert that will indeed become deadly.

He is even more dangerous with a fishing rod, spinning it back and then out with too heavy a lure on the end. While we watch, Vice President Mike Pence received a Kennedy Medal of Honor and pause to take in the meaning of that award, for him and the country.

Last week Public Broadcasting was threatened and ‘Films not made in America’ are on this week’s hit list as he called them a “security threat”, saying that “Other nations have stolen our Movie industry” The thought that art forms of any kind are like cats not owned by anyone but casting their lot with whoever gives them the best deal has not crossed the minds of the minions in the White House. Or maybe it has? Is the film industry to be reeled in with all the creators of all art to be marinated with the a new sauce before being tossed into the scorching barbecue pit of Great America.

Spring has balked at heralding summer. The clouds are heavy with gun smoke as Israel attacks Yemen, Lebanon, Syria and Gaza all in one day. The blame lies elsewhere they say. And so far there are no children with a magical army of peace to stop this.

Here in Great Britain council seats were contested across the country splitting the United Kingdom into disarray. The Reform party led by Nigel Farage has taken a bold lead, sending the Conservatives tumbling to sit below the Lib Dems, whose leader, Ed Davey, MP for Kingston and Surbiton, is busy celebrating by playing village cricket and serving up just-out-of-the oven warm scones smothered in cream and strawberry jam at the tea break. Sir Keir Starmer looks rather shell-shocked and is almost pleading with the people to ‘give him more time.’ before he, too, dutifully served tea at the long table laid out along Downing Street for the 80th VE celebrations for the end of WW II.

Princes George and William listen to a Veteran at Tea time in Buckingham Palace

Monday was the beginning of England’s week long celebrations. The Royal family were dutifully out on display, paying tribute to the soldiers, sea and airmen who fought then, and those who continue to serve. As in other countries that celebrate this day, there are fewer and fewer active service personal alive to be wheeled out and thanked, while each country continues to prepare for war.

This has been a letter from A Broad written and read for you by Muriel Murch.

Supported by murch studio.com

Hove Actually.

April 29, 2025May 1, 2025 / aggiemurch / 9 Comments

Written and Read for you by Muriel Murch with WSM by my side.

Last week we took the train from London’s Victoria Station to Hove. Brighton and Hove that is, Hove tagging along beside its more famous big sister Brighton, never quite able to keep up. Which is why we were to spend the night in a cheaper seaside hotel in Hove rather than Brighton, and though the hotel boasted of a five-star breakfast, it remained Hove as the shingle beach stretches all along the Essex county coast line. It’s been a bitter marriage. Hove remains the smaller sister, its houses on the roads to the seaside crammed side by side with no breathing room between them.

After the last war, every few houses became a boarding house, helping widows and poor relations hold onto their homes. Such was the lot of my Uncle Geoff and Aunt Gertrude, Geoff having retired as a Canadian Mountie and failed as a real estate developer returning from Canada. There was possibly not a lot of interest in development for the wilds of Alberta in the early 1950’s. I was sent to stay with Uncle Geoff and Aunt Gertrude in what I now see as an attempt to revert the family estate back to me, the only offspring of six children. I failed at that, but learnt to swim in the King Alfred seawater baths at Hove. I also learnt about hunger for the first time in my life, Geoff and Gertrude’s Canadian life style didn’t include three meals a day. Another spinster aunt, Edith, lived close by, and her house was even more dismal than Geoff and Gertrude’s. Looking back I realize that my father was the only one of those six children to make it out of Canterbury and into a more successful life. No wonder Geoff and Gertrude were not going to hand back the small-as-it-was Slater Estate.

The Peace Statue that marks the entrance to Brighton

We taxied to the hotel, that looked no different from the houses along the road, and were greeted by a sweet young European woman who looked no different from all the European hotel staff who arrived at Victoria Station in the 1950’s, looking to better their lives and those of their families back home. The outline of the old house is still visible as we climbed the stairs to the top floor. All done over and with the necessary wifi connections. A quick change, back downstairs, to the next taxi and through the rush hour traffic along the coastal roadside, passing the Peace Statue into Brighton. A supper moment meeting the co-guests of this event, Victor and Wendy Armstrong – fellow film makers, English – who made their home and livelihood in Los Angeles. Victor being the world’s most prolific stunt double. His career is as legendary as Walter’s and this evening’s event is an interesting twinning of production action and post production manipulation of that action.

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’.

The morning gets us down to the 5 star breakfast which was probably the most appalling breakfast I have ever been faced with. And it must have been appalling for those poor European girls to prepare, never mind serve. Even the coffee – we won’t discuss the coffee. So we walked to the beach, the shingle stones as large and unforgiving as they were to my 10-year-old feet. The sun was shining, the beach huts all still closed up and only a few brave souls were at the water’s edge. The cold and the currents take no prisoners here in Sussex.

We took the train back to London, where the cottage was waiting for us, and the pigeons were impatient for feeding. Fred, I think it is Fred, has been doing a dance, turning in circles in one of the flower pots to attract Freda, who is not that impressed with this swirling dervish courtier. The parrots are having better luck, a pair cozying up to the feeder together. They give us pleasure, these birds as we watch their antics in relief to those we see having in the United fractured States of America. But are cracks slowly beginning to be visible as the axes of untrained gardeners slash into the undergrowth of Government? There are checks occurring, the latest being that while the Pope honored King Charles and Queen Camila with an audience, he guided JC Vance into the learned hands of Cardinal Pietro Parolin and the foreign minister, Archbishop Paul Gallagher. “There was an exchange of opinions on the international situation, especially regarding countries affected by war, political tensions and difficult humanitarian situations, with particular attention to migrants, refugees, and prisoners,” said the statement reported in The Guardian. Whereas the parameters of Islam follow the concentric expansion of interests that little by little extends to other persons and groups. The Christian one – as in this Easter Message – read for the Pope –

“I appeal to all those in positions of political responsibility in our world not to yield to the logic of fear which only leads to isolation from others, but rather to use the resources available to help the needy, to fight hunger and to encourage initiatives that promote development. These are the ‘weapons’ of peace: weapons that build the future, instead of sowing seeds of death!”

No matter which religion one follows, none include the concept of ‘Proizvol’ a Russian word that means the arbitrary abuse of power, the effect of which is a feeling that anything can happen to anyone at any time and that there is no accountability. Russia has this word for it, I wonder, do we?

Vance has to go to India, fast on the heels of China’s president Xi Jinping, who manages with a smile and charm to show Beijing having a steady hand on the tiller of commerce. But the Indian farmers, who outnumber any of those in North America, could rumble into Mumbai powering their concern and displeasure at Usha Vance bringing this American husband to her homeland. They are not convinced that he has come in the spirit of cooperation.

Vice President JD Vance has been tripping about and often tripping on unforeseen obstacles such as other countries opinions of his ‘America First’ Foreign Policy. It just doesn’t occur to him, or other members of this US government that going around the world shouting “America First” is – to put it politely – very rude. It’s also not polite to so brashly criticize your hosts defense spending or saying, while in Greenland, “We have to have Greenland.” Over this Easter Weekend it was touch and go if the ailing Pontiff would in fact grant Vance and audience, but finally – as it would – kindness and good manners prevailed and JD and his wife were allowed into the presence of the Pope. It was brief, Vance’s Motorcade idled in the Vatican grounds for a mere 17 minutes as JD nipped in and out it, appearing to listen, before patting the ailing Pope on the arm. They were give chocolate for the children and sent on their way.

As Vance boards his plane flying into India he will have heard of the Pope’s death. Will he, can he, reflect on his ‘America First’ attitude maybe being one more endurance that the Pope shouldered before putting down his burden ?

This has been A letter from A. Broad, written and read for you by Muriel Murch.

As always supported by murchstudio.com