It’s the Trees

April 14, 2025 / aggiemurch / 1 Comment

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

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

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

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

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

Penguins on Norfork Island are confused by Liberation Day. Photo from Dales Radio.

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

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

Even here in this quiet corner of London we feel it, the head-shaking from our neighbors, the decisions not to visit America – the US president is on every newscast in this country and around most of the world and that is possibly a Very Important Thing for him.

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

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

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

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

Regent’s Park Cherry Trees in bloom

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

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

Not Fit for Purpose

June 17, 2020February 5, 2021 / aggiemurch

Recorded and knit together by WSM
Aired on KWMR.org June 17 2020

After three months in lockdown it was time to venture beyond NW1 deeper into the city at West 2. My audiologist was working through his waiting list of patients and my name came up. With two small children at home, he was, frankly, happy to be working.

“The 274 bus will take you to Marble Arch and then it is a five minute walk.” But running late I hailed a taxi. The cabbie kept his windows open and I my mask and gloves on. Late but not too late, I followed Mark into his back room wondering how is this going to work. But the appointments are spaced 15 minute apart to clean the rooms. He took a brief history and looked at my old aides, trying to hide his amazement.
“These are 9 years old.”

Into the box I go and testing begins. The spacing between beeps is far too long. This is not good. Nor is his final verdict, “You might want to tell your children. And these,” he concludes looking again at my old friends, “are no longer Fit for Purpose.”

He sets me up anew and I will read the directions several times to get the best out of my National Health aides. My fingers are crossed and my glasses adjusted hoping that these new friends will ‘See me out.’

Not Fit for Purpose. One thing to say that about an old, but still working, appliance, but a little different for a person.

Though stooped low with osteoporosis, Howard still walks as if about to run. Under his scruffy black cap his sparse, long hair flows behind him. Howard was a fine tennis coach in the small sports center at the north end of Regent’s Park. There were four tennis courts, a golf practice range and cricket nets. But a fresh administration, a clean sweep with a new broom, and the golf and tennis areas were cleared away to increase wilderness for the hedgehogs. A catering hub was built overlooking the newly laid out cricket and football pitches now there was money saved and money earned.

The little tennis club at the other end of the park grew, attracting sweet young things and handsome jocks. And the staff had to fit that look. Howard and his Russian friend did not make the cut and his friend was so devastated he committed suicide. Howard manfully struggles on. Now as his knees and heart age he often stops to rest on his hurried walks back from the village. In this coronavirus loneliness he feels keenly ‘Unfit for Purpose’.

George Floyd’s murder has brought much of the world to attention and the last two weekends in England have been marked with protest marches for ‘Black Lives Matter’ and the BAME communities. And once again the protests have been mucked about by nationalists looking for a good ‘bust up.’ There is no football, no beer and few jobs. Ironically, Nazi Nationalists are seen defending Churchill’s statue while a very buff Patrick Hutchinson tosses an older white skin-head over his shoulder, because, as he said, ’He was separated and needed to get back to his people.’

Patrick Hutchinson rescues a white nationalist Photo credit the Wimbledon Times

When Edward Colston’s statue was pulled from his pinnacle in Bristol, graffitied, today’s version of tarred and feathered – then rolled and tossed into the harbour from whence landed his slave trading fortune, people began to look around. Who else glorified a past built on the enslavement of others for the enrichment of trade? Even Oxford University faced its mixed messages of Cecil Rhodes and Nelson Mandela. “We are going to have to work together now you and I” Mandela said to the statue when he set up the Mandela Rhodes Trust in 2003 to help heal racial divisions.

In London, Winston Churchill’s doomed statue stands on Parliament Square. One weekend graffitied and the next – to protect and possibly buy time – he was boxed up. One couldn’t help smiling – just a little – at the irony of this move. Boris Johnson huffing and puffing that his hero Winston Churchill had to be put in a box and that Sadiq Khan, the son of a London bus driver and now major of London after Boris, was the one to do it. Surely even Boris might have a glimmer of understanding that these statues, even that of his beloved Winston, might now be considered Not Fit for Purpose. This week’s attention is on Clive of India – another dastardly (the word fits) fellow, who is tucked away in Whitehall.

But how do we remember history? How do we teach it, respecting what was good while acknowledging the mostly unrecognized, unspoken atrocities that each and every country inflicts on those who stand in their way or from whom they can benefit?

Typically Johnson has proclaimed ‘A committee will be formed to review race relations’. Some in government will laugh and chuckle, while those in minority communities across the country will weep with resignation at this announcement. Reviews after racial incidents have been happening since race relations began to overtake class inequalities in import. It has been hard to track the snail’s pace of change in this country. But maybe this can be the time, as families from the countries we have plundered march and kneel together, to keep pressure on this government to look again, not only at the statues but in the class-rooms and work to do more for an England that is ‘Fit For Purpose’ in today’s world.

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