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/

Morning Moments

February 9, 2025 / aggiemurch

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

Across the high street from the general merchants, Wainwrights and Sons – when general merchants sold everything from coal, lumber and rabbit food – was a small glass-fronted, with green trim, coffee and pastry shop. It was run by Madame Max and painted above the door, in curly blue writing ‘Mrs Max’s Café’. She must have been a refugee from the war and somehow had landed in our small town in Fleet in Hampshire. I like to think there may have been a story from a returning army officer giving her a helping hand to start her life once more. There are stories we never know. Lady Pechell was a daily customer, riding her bicycle from the two miles from the rhododendron shrouded Denorban Avenue into the village. 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. She pocketed more lumps of sugar for her ponies. Though sugar was also rationed and because she was a little eccentric and her husband had fought in two world wars, nobody minded. A mystery surrounded her, her husband Sir Paul, that maybe included Madame Max and her café.

I’m thinking of those times after reading Emma Beddington in the Guardian last week. Her article was about Starbucks, now getting people out of their U.S. coffee shops with a new “Coffeehouse Code of Conduct,” making people buy something or leave. Someone has been scratching their corporate head wondering how, in the words from ‘The Loved one’ “To get those stiffs off of my property.”

Robert Morley and Robert Morse in The Loved One 1965

This attitude has caused quite a stir-up in the brew that makes up coffee house culture in the U.S. and Europe. It’s a big thing in all cultures and wouldn’t you know it it is America that can’t quite handle the slow soothing pace of sipping. There are all sorts of reasons, the economy being the main thrust driving Starbucks which, really isn’t failing but has always seemed to be on overdrive. I’m remembering European workmen, standing at coffee bars in Rome and Paris, taking an expresso hit before their day started and women pausing for a refresher mid-morning to get them through the day. I’m thinking of Bianca, who I met 30 years ago in the Piazza San Lorenzo, our dogs yapping at each other leading to a conversation, a visit with homemade raspberry sorbet and a postcard from Puccini.

KHARKIV OBLAST, UKRAINE – NOVEMBER 20 2023.
(Photo by Diego Herrera Carcedo/Anadolu via Getty Images)

Soldiers stand about – taking their coffee before heading back out on patrol. How is it now for the Russian and Ukrainian solders in Northern Europe slogging on in February where the war between them has wearied both the soldiers, the politicans and those of us who are watching from thousands of miles away. They have no comfort, barely some companionship that may or may not be with them at the end of the day. February for foot soldiers in war is the month of mud, spring and relief seems far away. Russian troops are killing more Ukrainian war prisoners and The new US President is doing his ‘gimme gimme’ routine with Ukraine, asking for ‘Rare Earth’ in exchange for weapons. Rare Earth that would be better used for rebuilding a war torn country when all of that stops.

And as for the old fella’s tariffs on Canada and Mexico, well they may have slid backwards or even backfired. The Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said she reached an agreement with the US president to pause tariffs for a month as Mexico sends 10,000 troops to the border to stop migrants crossing into the US and address drug smuggling. And after talks with the Canadian prime minister, Justin Trudeau, there is a month’s pause going north as well. Both these agreements were apparently all in place before they were ‘renegotiated’. But it is too late for the Kentucky Bourbon now being pulled off of the Canadian Liquor store shelves. Meanwhile China responds in its own way.

In Europe Sir Keir Starmer has been to Brussels and managed to say pretty much nothing as he walked the gymnastic balance beam in front of the whole European school. He made it to the end – without falling off – but only just. A journalist from the BBC no less – called out that surely these were not ordinary times in the political arena. That the Orange one is rather upsetting the apple cart. Standing beside Sir Keir Starmer in a joint conference, Mark Rutte the former prime minister of the Netherlands and now the Secretary General of NATO said that “I am absolutely convinced that we can deal with these issues, and there are always issues between allies, … sometimes bigger, sometimes smaller. But I’m absolutely convinced that will not get in the way of our collective determination to keep our deterrence strong.” They looked very alone standing in their joint conviction of collective peace in our time.

Sir Keir Starmmer and Mark Rutte standing together in Brussels

Tariffs tossed out across borders, gutting of American government bodies is keeping the president busy and he will get hand cramp if he is not careful signing away the country in a Coup. This weekend sees BB Netanyahu sitting in DC having photos taken, and a chat about Gaza – or what to do with the rubble that is left of the state. It is doubtful that they will talk about the people. But there will be a statement about something ‘definitely happening’. But as we doubt those ‘definitely happening’ statements we worry and need to share those thoughts; the effects of this new global bickering and power plays that is costing lives, along with worries about our communities as the trickle-down effect of this new reality takes hold, our friends getting older and our families.

It is seriously raining outside but our need for companionship in another place, neither work nor home, calls us out. And so we come together, meeting in town for an hour to sit at Toby’s with our cups of coffee. Chris Giacomini is moving the chairs back into the feed barn so that we are dry. He understands more than most that the need for companionship – sharing our worries and the world’s troubles with a friend are served best – in that other place – slowly sipping a cup of coffee.

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

As always supported by murchstudio.com

666 Days and Counting

December 28, 2024December 29, 2024 / aggiemurch

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

Stinson Beach from the Airplane, photo by WSM

Bump bump bump goes the United Airlines plane as we fly across the mid-west and over the Rockies, it is as if the plane is no longer sure what is United, and as for ‘flying the friendly skies’ that went the way of all bombers. We bumped until we didn’t – descending like a glider over the Point Reyes Peninsula, seeing our home stretch of California before heading back to land.

As we were a week later than planned, there was no time to slowly unpack and settle in before the appointments all lined up. Day one, Doctor in the city, check. Day two, doctor in the country, check. Day three, The Department of Motor Vehicles, check, an Xray here, a medication pick up there and we are check, checked again – now hungry and exhausted. But it is barely late afternoon and as we are a little ways north we gratefully pull up at the Rancho Nicasio Bar and Restaurant which quietly stays open for those like us, coming home too tired and hungry to cook. It’s a small row, really all one building, and looking at it, it is always strange to think that this was going to be the center seat of Marin County. How would the county have emerged if that had happened instead of San Rafael? The bar restaurant is the biggest holding here, tucked beside it is the grocery store that was out of milk, and almost hidden by an overhanging oak tree in the corner is the post office. As we pull up and the boys walk towards the bar door, another car pulls in and smiling through her window is a dear friend that I haven’t seen for a year. She is here to get her mail – at the post office. And I too have letters to post. Another gentleman, whose name I can’t remember, also smiles hello to me, and I am reminded that this is what the postoffice does – weaving a vital thread through the community as folks come and go checking for their mail and on each other, even more than community libraries, they are places of and for community.

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. After all – how many votes are we? Though adding up a few thousand here and a few thousand there could make a difference. Meanwhile our long-suffering nearby neighbors make room for us at their post offices, where we take up space, make the queues longer at their counters, and mingle with their friends.

The famous Bolinas 2 Miles road sign memorialised as an ornament.

As we drive home at dusk through the soft falling rain we can stop rushing. I can take in the twisted limbs, fallen trunks and greening pastures, the trees are shiny with their sparse autumnal beauty. The mud in these fields is not so dense and thick as that of small farms in England. The weather is not so raw, and the cattle are calving well on their own. The roads are glistening as streams cross them in a hurry, there are clusters of mushrooms sitting brazenly on the verges, tempting one to stop and venture into the woodlands. But we carry on home, grateful to have finished our day and be able to light a fire for warmth.

It is in the gratitude of sitting by the fireside that I think of those I have left behind in England for these months of relative comfort. The wars still being waged, erupting like bubbling volcanos, The Ukraine, Gaza – is there anything left of Gaza? and now the rock pulled away from the oppression by the Assad regime in Syria uncovering more cruelty than we know how to absorb. How can it go on? So many of us ‘of a certain age’ turn away in depressed horror and despair. A reader had asked Johnathan Freedland of the Guardian “How do we live in this terrible world?” and he tries – at quite a few column inches – to answer. But it is not easy – It is hard to put your faith in the goodness of our fellow human beings when we read of the horror of cruelty and the greed of those in power.

Catching up on old copies of ‘The Week’ I found a quote from President Barack Obama which seems to help. “At the end of the day, we’re part of a long running story. We just try to get our paragraph right.”

Our family Christmas tree star, going on 40+ years now

So with my paragraph I am sending out a prayer of gratitude for all the good people and things I know are here in our world.

Thank you for those who are trying to bring back our local post office. Thank you to those who are growing our food, caring for each other, those who are helping the sick, the family and friends who are suffering with illness and loss. Thank you to artist friends we know who have risked so much to bring truth through story into our lives. Thank you.

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

And supported by murchstudio.com

A Week Ago

November 16, 2024November 16, 2024 / aggiemurch

A week ago on Wednesday.

Written and produced by Muriel Murch with WSM by my side

There was a stillness in the air – The cloud-shielded sky was hiding its sorrow that the world it was covering could well now begin to die. Conversations at the corner cafe were subdued and somber. Nobody was smiling, not even in greetings. Our American friend and neighbor and I sat together nursing our long overdue coffee moment. As we took time to catch up, he spoke of waiting for his Lithuanian passport. What in the world has changed that he is looking forward to a Lithuanian passport?

A lumbering beast has come into the room, lurching forward, knocking against the chessboard where a game is forever in progress. The King has been moved and there is a new guard surrounding him. As the board shudders to a halt, the pawns in the front row of defense are jostling about, each seeking a square of safety. But there is little to be found. Even those soldiers who surround the new King will be knocked off the board before this game is over.

Prime ministers and presidents across the world pick up their phones and press numbers stored on speed-dial. Who will they phone first, the incoming King or the outgoing President? They will make more than one call, many to be denied later in the press, for there are many corners of the board to be covered. For those – like the Taliban – who don’t have phone access, they can always post a tweet on the public notice board marked X. Photographic coverage of war leaders shows a smiling Netanyahu and a serious Zelensky. Putin can’t keep the sly smugness out of his eyes while communication with President Zelensky is paused as support is reconsidered. The UK’s chief of defense staff said approximately 1,500 Russian troops were being killed or injured every day, while the 10,000 soldiers sent from North Korea are already suffering casualties. Now the United Kingdom is looking at its options. Possibly how to honor its word with support while changing what that support could mean. A bribe perhaps? Money rather than weapons – but there is no time for funds to become weapons.

In Gaza there are collapsed corridors of rubble where streets and buildings once stood, leaving families to scrape with their bare hands to retrieve the bodies of their loved ones. While the ‘surrender or starve’ policy has been denied by Israel, earlier this week a military official told BBC reports it had “no intention” of allowing Palestinians to return to their homes in Northern Gaza. There will be no cease-fire in Gaza. Israel will continue with its annihilation of that country.

That was the week that was – or was not – depending on your frame of reference. The English news media continue writing and scurrying around words and projecting policies while the politicians, in England and all over Europe, are shifting their papers and policies as fast as they can. The moral high ground seems to be sinking.

I spent Wednesday and Thursday gnawing on my nails, shredding them to jagged uneven tops. Turning to the drinks cupboard, it was an easy finish of the almost empty sherry, whiskey, and gin bottles. There was not much in them to start with, but upending all three bottles of their dregs was telling. We look around and can only console ourselves with caring for each other.

Neal’s Yard Cheese shop in London by **Frank Fujimoto**

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.”

Ah yes, Some of those wrong’uns for sure. But then there are the 5 % good ‘uns such as Paul Horton, the owner of Apidae Honey in Lincolnshire. Paul sells ‘proper honey’. Not like 90% of the honey tested from retailers selling to supermarkets – all considered suspicious by the British branch of the Honey Authenticity Network.

King Charles III at the Remembrance day Service. The Princess Royal next to him.

This weekend is Remembrance Day Weekend. For the first time in a week the sun is shining. Whenever the date falls, the weekend Friday brings a ‘Festival of Remembrance’ at the Royal Albert Hall with the senior royals all in attendance. The service, filled with traditional music, ends with the first of the two minute silences as paper poppy petals fall on the audience of armed forces and civilians all standing to attention. On Saturday morning the Family comes out once more, leading the nation in remembering those who fought and died in the continued wars we fight. While we follow this remembrance here in England, it is played out in all corners of the British Isles and in Europe.

Sir Keir Starmer joined President Emanuel Macron for the Armistice Day Remembrance in Paris

For the first time since 1944, when Churchill was in Paris, Sir Keir Starmer joined the French President Emanuel Macron for the Armistice Day Remembrance in Paris. They stood together, Sir Keir with his red poppies, Emmanuel with his Blue cornflowers, both symbols of their country’s losses during the wars beyond the first. And in summer, in the cornfields of France and England, those two flowers, the red poppy and blue cornflower grow together, side by side amidst the wheat which is cut down in the harvest of bread and blood. The two minute silence was repeated in at 2 minutes to 11 on the 11th day of the 11th month.

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

And as always supported by murchstudio.com

Fading Flags

April 27, 2024 / aggiemurch / 2 Comments

Written and produced by Muriel Murch with WSM by my side.

Driving out along the lagoon, over the mountain, and down the twisting road through the Redwoods into another town, the large Ukrainian flags are faded and torn but still fluttering under the trees.

They look weary like the soldiers themselves must be. That war, between Russia and Ukraine, is into its second year and is now being jostled out of the headlines and overtaken by the three way shootout that is occurring between Gaza, Israel and Palestine. 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.

Daily, more young, untrained Russian boys and old men are sent into battle to wear down the Ukrainian military. In 2022 the Russian Wagner leader Yevgeny Prigozhin began recruiting prisoners for his private army – until that all went pear shaped and ‘angry words were spoken’. Shortly after that Prigozhin was killed in a plane crash. But – to no one’s surprise – the Russian defense minister has continued with the same policy, containing the stipulation that enlisted prisoners must fight until they die or the war is over – whichever comes first. Prison recruits remain crucial to the success of the Meat Grinder… The modern term for Cannon Fodder.

Nobody really knows how many Russian and Ukrainian solders or civilians are dying. But all Russians steeped in their history know, from Tolstoy’s War and Peace to Maylis De Kerangal’s Eastbound, war in Russia is carried genetically through ancestral bloodlines. For the Ukraine it is not a lot different – maybe the war dead figures are more honest – it is hard to tell. President Zelensky is anxious and impatient calling for the military aid package just passed by the US Congress over the weekend to be delivered now – not in six months time.

Back in London, though there are no more welcome signs for refugees from any country, this war is still on the page. The prancing dance that is happening with Putin, the West, China and the East is keeping at least some journalists on their toes.

London welcomes me back into a land of brown people and I am grateful. There is kindness all around me. I push my trolly-load of luggage towards the parked taxi driver at the airport, who, when we reach the cottage, brings my suitcases inside and lifts them onto the spare bed.

But our UK Government remains as tight, shortsighted and corrupt as ever. Another Tory minister resigns here, mud is slung at Angela Rayner the labour Deputy Prime Minister there, and, goodness me, Peter Murrell, the husband of the last Scottish First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon, is under arrest again. Released of course – the only polite thing to do – and to be investigated further – in due course. Well maybe. This is beyond sad, another betrayal as most people whatever they felt about an independent Scotland admired and even liked Nicola Sturgeon as she brought Scotland through the Covid crisis. Lifting its head slightly out from underneath these stained seats of government we find other unbelievable act of fly swatting.

Through The European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, the EU have proposed free moment for young European Union citizens and Britons across the borders, allowing young people from the EU to stay in the UK to work or study for reciprocal periods of time. As Ursula said, this would have been where there could be “closer collaboration. The topic of youth mobility is in both our interests, because the more we have youth mobility being on both sides of the Channel, the more we increase the probability we will be on good terms because the next generation knows each other very well.” But Rishi doesn’t seem to want to get to know anyone outside of his home-county set and has rejected that, the government saying that ‘Brexit had ended free movement and it had no desire to reopen that conversation, even with strict conditions on length of stay.’ God help this country.

As I began to write, the question of shipping undocumented immigrants to Rwanda was being batted back and forth across the aisles of Parliament for maybe the fourth time. There is no doubt that if the bill passes, those held in ‘safe housing’ will disappear into the urban ghettos of this country. Some will die, many will be extorted, while only a very few will reunite with their families or move on to make some kind of a life for themselves. Sunak will merely have transported the jungles of Calais to the cities of Liverpool and London. After a night of back and forth from the green seats of the Commons to the tattered red ones of the Lords the bill was passed – at the cost of 1.8 Million pounds per person – before it was time for an early morning cup of tea. It goes to the King on Tuesday evening and goodness knows how he is going to keep his mouth shut and sign it.

It is hard to think about this as I sit on the sofa at dusk watching the evening light soften and glow, as if to say, ‘That was an ok day wasn’t it? The plants in my pots on my small terrace garden must have bloomed for our guests: volunteer Bluebells coming out of home-made compost, yellow Cowslips raised and bowed down. The geraniums and fuchsias are not quite ready to come out of hibernation while the unpruned rose buds are reaching for any weak spring sunshine. The pigeons and squirrels scurry around though the bird feeder needs replenishing and rehanging before the smaller birds will return. But it is dusk and Lucy the fox is back. Her coat is full and healthy while her udder glistens from the recent suckling of her kits. She too has sensed the movement behind the glass, the lights flickering on and off, and has come to check my egg supply. I go to the fridge and get one for her. Sliding open the terrace door I place it just inside the cottage. Tentatively, checking my smell and my seat on the sofa, she steps froward and takes the egg in her mouth, turns and neatly hops off between my pots to trot along the wall and disappear.

Lucy comes for her first egg of the evening Photo by WSM.

She returns ten minutes later for a second egg. How many kits does she have this year? A famous Italian designer has a trophy home just across the wall and with his garden unused for the winter months this could be where Lucy and her family live. The park – with its tall grasses and hedgerows – is just across the road and the canal with its river-rat filled verges is only a quarter of a mile away. Can Lucy and her family live peacefully in that garden or will they too be evicted out of their found safety to wander to find a new place to call home.

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

And always overseen by – beatrice @ murchstudio.com

Serving Safety

April 13, 2024 / aggiemurch / 1 Comment

Written and Recorded by Muriel Murch with WSM by my side

When you want a ‘good old American Breakfast’ you need a ‘good old American restaurant’ to go to. There are a couple still thriving on the main street of Novato, in California. We go to Marvin’s. The tables are crammed together, the outside dining that came in with Covid, remains – and for those new to Novato, with small fluffy dogs as accessories, those tables are fine. But for us, not locals but oldies, inside is better. The coffee comes quicker, the menu is there and you only get water if you ask for it. The restaurant is crammed and with a fluidity of a well-honed team the kitchen, and wait-staff dance between us all and even have time to smile and say hello. The clientele inside is mostly old, local, male and large. Which makes placing cardboard on the floor of the tiny bathroom a more than sensible idea. So do the signs posted on the walls, ‘ For goodness sake clean up after yourself’, ‘Anything is possible if you have the courage to make it happen,’ ‘You never know what you have until it’s gone. Toilet paper for instance.’ Returning to our table, my second cup of coffee is ready for me and I am beginning to feel better. And that is the gift that a restaurant, worthy of the name, gives to its patrons.

One of Marvin’s ‘All American’ breakfasts.

For over 50 years Cupertino-based Chefs of Compassion Cooking for a Cause has held an annual fundraiser dinner. A gala evening event of food, giving the attendees a feast fit for their dollars as they support the West Valley Community Services – serving those in need from the cratered and neglected pockets Santa Clara County. It is one of thousands of not-for-profit organizations throughout the country and the world that help those struggling with food, and to get by with things that many of us take for granted.

I stumbled across The Chefs of Compassion when reading of the sudden death of a beloved friend, Chef Steve Simmons. Steve and I first met when he was cajoled onto the board of Full Circle Programs. Barely out of apprenticeship he was far too young to enjoy sitting at meetings. He was busy claiming his place alongside other rising chefs in the Bay Area, such as Ogden Bradley. But he was game and eager to help with my first ever fund-raising event: a screening of The English Patient for the Full Circle Programs in 1997. I didn’t have a clue what I was doing but Steve had everything under control and – if I remember correctly – gracefully served up oysters and champagne. The event was a modest success and we made money for the program. Steve soon became a renowned and sought-after Bay Area Chef in his own right before opening his own success story, Bubbas’ Diner in San Anselmo. Bubba’s was perfect for meetings, family gatherings and just plain, ‘let me sit-down for a moment and gather myself before the next whatever hits me’. With constant affection, our lives crossed paths for over thirty years. Steve’s sudden death from a heart attack brings a personal sadness as it does to all his friends, colleagues and family. He leaves three children to still scramble through school. But Steve’s work carried a constant in that, as well as being a fine chef, his desire to help those less fortunate was a hallmark of his work and is seen so often in other chefs, serving from small roadside kitchens or in world-renowned restaurants. Serving and sharing food is a passion that reaches out from our own kitchen table, to our communities and beyond.

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Chef José Andrés and his carrots

There are chefs who are known not only for their cooking, books, fame and fortunes but for their humanitarian work feeding the world. Such a chef is the Spanish American José Ramón Andrés who, with a matador’s flair naturally rose to the challenges ahead of him in the 1990’s when he arrived in New York. Success quickly followed success and took him to Washington DC where, dinning in his restaurants, meetings over a meal, discord could become accord. In 2010 Andrés founded the World Central Kitchen beginning by focusing on feeding communities hit with natural disasters but too quickly found itself operating – like Doctor’s without Borders – in areas of conflict – as wars marched side by side with climate change as the cause for famine and disease. While many chefs are artists in the kitchen and business men behind the till, Andrés is also a deeply caring man. Like an army General he quickly strode across the global stage with his humanitarian work.

Wherever war has brought hunger, the World Kitchen has been there, serving the food of the people to the people. The World Central Kitchen has grown to be enormous, serving food and people’s worldwide. Currently it is operating in Haiti, Ukraine, Poland, Israel and Gaza. In Ukraine, chefs and restauranteurs jockey with each other to feed the best borscht to their people, in the Middle East to honour Ramadan and other religions, and now the World Central Kitchen serves in Israel and Gaza, bringing the food of comfort to both Israelis and Palestinians. Though more at home behind a roaring grill or unloading the flatbed of a truck, Andrés fingers are now busy working the computer and phones as he looks to use any influence he has to halt the war in Gaza. Andrés is outspoken in his criticism of anyone who cannot see the need for humanitarian aid and his work is such that nobody wants to be seen not being compassionate. Both Republican and Democrat Senators are known to nod sagely when he speaks. Even in Israel, where the World Central Kitchen immediately gathered forces to feed those affected from the Hamas attack in October, Andrés can speak. But now – as that assault became a full blown war – and Netanyahu seized the excuse to attack Gaza, squeezing Palestinians into tighter corrals with less and less resources, things became personal for Andrés. A pier was built by the U.S. Military where food, water and relief could be unloaded safely and delivered to the Palestinians still trapped on the Gaza Strip. With the precision of a Military General Andrés already had supply workers lined up in a convoy. One, two and three, the vehicles were picked off by Israeli soldiers and all seven of the international volunteer workers were killed. Quickly Andrés took pen to paper and wrote op-ed pieces both in the New York Times and in Israel’s largest newspaper, plus tweets and all forms of media. He wrote “Israel is better than the way this war is being waged,” For the moment that supply route is closed.

Andrés’ 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, and bring a peace at the table.

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

And always overseen by – beatrice @ murchstudio.com

Rain Stops Play

May 21, 2021 / aggiemurch

Recorded and Knit together by WSM

The third week in May – and it is still raining steadily. Umbrella in hand, it was time to take the 274 bus into town. The bus was already half full, so I sat upstairs to look down over the London streets and see a group of young Asian men, carrying their hefty bags full of cricket gear on their way to the park. One is already dressed in his Cricket whites. Do they dream of one day playing in the holy of holies, Lord’s Cricket Grounds close by in St. John’s Wood? Founded in 1788 by Thomas Lord, the grounds were moved at least three times before settling into this corner of Marylebone. Noted historical progressions through the years included that in 1864 the purchase of a lawn mower removed the need to keep sheep. Those young men I saw from my bus would have been in the grounds where my father was a member for all of his adult life.

I arrived at the edge of the city to where, even with the soft rain falling, the pubs’ and restaurants’ outdoor tables are full. Most shops have been opened again on the Marylebone High Street, but with some noticeable gaps where high-end English brands used to sit proudly on their corner lots. They were always just out of my price range and I am not as sympathetic as I could be.

On Monday, more lockdown restrictions were eased but we are going slowly, being sensible, as the health Minister Matt Hancock urges us all to be. But maybe there will be some lightening of the infection load that will bring this, and other countries, safely out of hibernation.

Every country is looking at what their government could have done better, safer, faster to save more lives. Doors, gateways, air pathways and sea-channels have been opened and closed with speeds that relate to the economy as much as infection rates. All governments have behaved badly to various degrees. There have been profiteers and deals of equipment, and devious deals of no equipment. Last week the head of a pharmaceutical firm in India fled to London after failing to provide more affordable vaccines to his own country. The blame? Already shifted to Narendra Modi, India’s Prime Minister for not booking ahead and placing his order. The high numbers of infection rates and still low numbers of vaccines are struggling to meet on a world-wide level.

Over this year and half, the COVID-19 virus has been named and shamed as the Chinese, the Kent and now the Indian variant and – as it was named – so it fled to greener pastures. It must have been obvious to any epidemiologist that the Virus would change and mutate as the opportunity arose. That’s what viruses do. They are as opportunistic as all living beings. The Times newspaper estimated that at least 20,000 passengers from India were allowed to enter the UK because there was a trade deal in the works and a little hop to India would have got Boris out of his wallpaper dilemma . The Daily Mirror called Boris Johnson’s delay on closing travel from India another unforgivable ‘Own Goal’.

Another news item broke this week, one that many of us have been looking for. Andrew Marr, the BBC political broadcaster, whom we regularly watch with a Sunday Sofa breakfast, said he may leave the corporation so he can share his true views on politics. Speaking in Glasgow with the Scottish journalist Ruth Wishart, he said, ‘At some point, I want to get out and use my own voice again. How and when, I have no idea …. There are many privileges of working at the BBC, including the size of the audience and all of that, but the biggest single frustration by far is losing your own voice, not being able to speak in your own voice.’ Constraints such as this are a knife edge that all paid journalists must traverse, admitting the constraints is another.

For eight days and counting we have watched Israeli airstrikes and Hamas rocket barrages that have killed over 200 hundred people, the vast majority of them Palestinian women and children. Hospital buildings, schools and media centers have been bombed to rubble with Palestinians running, searching for their dead children. The heavy metal disparities are impossible to ignore. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gave no justification for targeting the 12-story press building in Gaza, though later claimed that Hamas had an intelligence unit inside. No news organization using the building had seen evidence of Hamas presence. He went on, “Israel’s military operation against Palestinian Hamas militants in Gaza will continue with full force. We are acting now, for as long as necessary, to restore calm… It will take time,” Mr Netanyahu warned. Time, to right which wrong?

1978 was the awards season for the film Julia, directed by Fred Zinneman and staring Vanessa Redgrave, Jane Fonda and Jason Robards. Julia was up for eight nominations including for best editor and so we were there that night. Sitting aways away, (Walter’s chances of winning were not considered high) Vanessa looked very young, and alone as she scampered up onto the stage to be greeted by an even bouncier John Travolta. Graciously she accepted her Oscar and then spoke: quietly, politely but with great purpose, her memorable speech denounced what she saw as the Zionist disturbers of that time. That speech cost her a full blown career in Hollywood, thus allowing all of the richness of her work in the cinematic and theatre arts to flow through different channels. Listening again to that speech from 1978 while looking to the now scant news screens, tragically darkened by this new wave of Israeli and Palestinian bombing of the land that is Gaza and Holy – I wonder when will the world be able to bow our heads in prayer – together again.

This has been a Letter from A. Broad.
Written and read for you by Muriel Murch
First aired on Swimming Upstream – KWMR.org.
Web support by murchstudio.com

Colours of Conscience

May 13, 2021 / aggiemurch

Recorded and Knit together by WSM

The hedgerows bow down with cowslip’s white lace to welcome us walking along the canal towpath. There is the faint smell of spring in the air which will coax summer into being as the bees find the blossoms of cowslip, hawthorne and elderflower. I am searching for the elderflower but because of the continuing cold weather she is shy to blossom. Not so the dog roses, peeking cheekily along the back pathways surrounding Primrose Hill. I must wait a week, two at the most, for my harvest to make elderflower cordial. In the city and the countryside the seasons are following one after the other, the way the Earth intended.

The countryside is one thing but the country is another. On Thursday, looking for renewal or some new life to emerge, the United Kingdom went to the polls for a by-election. This is when the local councils and townships vote for their councilors and mayors, the boots on the ground, who have to balance the ever-decreasing government budget hand-outs with the needs of their constituencies that those in Westminster’s Parliament are too busy to discuss.

The results trickled in over the weekend. Ballot counting was slow –apparently due to Covid – while both paid staff and volunteers worked hard, counting by hand as they always have. There was ‘some problems’ with the London mail-in votes as 30,000 were rejected as not being filled out correctly. I hope mine was not one of them. ‘Things will change,’ said the defeated Conservative Mayoral candidate, Shaun Bailey. Maybe.

But Sadiq Khan is back for another four years of hard grind and I am glad to see him. Though past Labour leaders such as Gordon Brown and Ed Miliband have seen and used Khan’s worth, the Conservative team will have little time for a working class Sunni Muslim son of a bus driver from Tooting. Growing up, Khan always worked while at school and university. Taking jobs from builders yards to the Peter Jones Department store in Sloane Square, Khan learnt early how England’s different worlds would treat him. The Westminster Conservatives will not give him an easy ride while he walks and works to his own conscience. On reelection he said,

“I will always be a mayor for all Londoners, working to improve the lives of every single person in this city…The scars of Brexit have yet to heal. A crude culture war is pushing us further apart.”
Sadiq Kahn

Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Mayor of London Sadiq Khan photo by P.A. Wire

Khan’s words are true not just for London but for the United Kingdom which look more frayed than ever before. Wales returned a strong Red rosette Labour party across the board. Scotland with Nicola Sturgeon came back with a daffodil yellow Scottish Independence party win, while England turned blue with the cold of a crushing Conservative paint job.

What happened to Labour that the nice Sir Kier Starmer lost so much ground? Maybe it was similar to Hillary Clinton’s error of not going to the people who were hurting and most afraid. For change is coming – for the English laborer who cares not to toil the fields or work the railroads. Now the work is for new technologies and inventive ways of producing and harnessing clean energy. With their belief that green policies embrace social justice, environmentalism and nonviolence and are inherently related to one another, the Green party is now nipping at the heels of the Big Two.

When Labour’s Andy Burnham was reelected as the mayor of Greater Manchester with a landslide victory, he shone a shining light on the North of England’s place in the country. Promising to adopt a “place-first not a party-first” policy he is, in his own way, echoing Sadiq Khan’s call for London with a reminder that England remains, or has become, more divided than ever before. It is not just North and South, rural and urban, English or British but a sewer-stuck mixture of all of these things in a country closing in on itself. Now more than ever the waters of the channel to Europe and beyond are looking like choppy seas.

The Queen’s Speech is today. This ceremonial occasion is where the Queen reads out the government’s new policies. As we watch her age with years and life’s burdens, the robes and weight of the office seem to smother her. She sits on her throne, reading words written by her government and on this occasion, like other times before, one holds the secret hope that she will stand and say. “This is not good enough. It is ridiculous, cruel, or incomplete.” We, the public, naturally have been leaked what is to be said. There is little of merit in the speech. The promise to help the United Kingdom recover from the effects of the Covid Pandemic carry, as Labour politicians point out, no meat or potatoes in those words. But one item seemly taken from one orange man and used by a yellow one, relates to voting reforms. Britons will have to show Photo IDs to vote in future General elections, and it is combined with a strange item that limits the number of postal votes that can be handed in on behalf of others. Ministers say this will reduce the risk of electoral fraud. While the Electoral Commission is quietly shaking its collective head, for in 2019 there was just one conviction and one police caution for impersonating another voter.

Looking beyond our shores, the fires of distress spark flames of unrest and fear across the world. This week sees Israel and Palestine hurl bombs and bullets at each other fighting for their homelands as they see it. The loss of children’s lives crossed all religions while those who can see, cry out “Enough already”.

This has been a Letter from A. Broad.

Written and read for you by Muriel Murch

First aired on Swimming Upstream – KWMR.org.

Web support by murchstudio.com