Green is for Grenfell

September 15, 2024 / aggiemurch

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

One evening last week, four mid-sized yellow ambulances screeched to a halt in the little parking cul-de-sac which serves this side of the Auden Place Council housing apartment blocks. The ambulances were left with engines running and lights flashing as the paramedics carrying their bags, searched to find where they needed to go. They were gone a long time and when later I finally looked out of the window the parking lot was empty. There had been no blue lights flashing or blaring sirens signaling their departure. The next day I learnt that Sylvie had fallen downstairs and had not recovered. Those who knew her went about the day sobered and reflective.

Last week the second volume of the Grenfell Inquiry report was finally published and made available to the survivors of the tragedy, and today’s government ministers. On the evening’s broadcast, the news-anchor standing in front of the Grenfell Tower, bathed in moonlight and cladding with its green heart wore a bright green coat as she spoke. Green-heart buttons are worn by Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer and London’s Major Sadiq Khan seen standing on the right side of this event.

The daily Parliamentary schedule allows that after the morning’s Prime Minister’s questions there is a pause for those who have meetings to attend – to leave. On the morning when the report was to be presented the choking exodus of Members of Parliament was sobering to those who remained seated and disgusting to those survivors watching. Sir Keir turned to face the gallery as he gave his heartfelt apology, acknowledging that on every level – regulatory, council care, business and responsibility – the Government had let them down. The report left no doubt that the 72 deaths from the Grenfell fire of 2017 were avoidable.

The living community that had existed within that tower block, that exists in all housing estates and neighborhoods to a degree, has become one of bereavement for the Grenfell survivors while they remain physically misplaced in temporary housing. ’We want Justice’, read the banners at Grenfell but what is justice, what would it look like? Now the buck of blame is sliding from the place of government regulation, to counselors who did not listen to their citizen’s concerns and onto leaders in businesses. Tracking those responsibile is like following a river to its source, as a hidden stream emerging from the earth that may yet come to rest outside of the garden shed of the Prime Minister of the time, the Rt Hon Lord David Cameron who so eagerly started his ‘bonfires of red tape’ hoping to free businesses of unnecessary regulations. ‘For every new regulation cut three’, was the guideline while each and every one of the construction firms with government contracts took advantage of the burnt red tape. Once all 1,700 pages of the Inquiry documents have been read, surely there will be some firms will be highlighted and named. Sir Keir Starmer calls for the companies involved in the disaster be banned from receiving government contracts, and that the government would support the Metropolitan Police’s investigation into the fire, saying it was “imperative that there is full accountability, including through the criminal justice process, and that this happens as swiftly as possible”. But the Metropolitan Police are stalling, shuffling papers to be read in detail by lawyers – before proceeding with any prosecutions. It will be at least two years before charges are brought against anyone deemed at this time to be responsible.

The report – all of it. Image: Ben Gingell via Dreamstime.com

While the inquiry has been bound together, distributed and read, the criminal courts have been unusually busy for August, as the far-right activists who erupted with violent anti-immigration protests in cities across the country a few weeks ago were rounded up and swiftly brought to trial. It was nasty. Sir Keir – again – expressed his determination to crack down hard on the rioters, and so the courts have been working overtime and in quick succession jail sentences have been handed out like military call-up papers. But there is another problem. England’s jails are reportedly ‘not fit for purpose’. Last week’s count showed only 500 places out of 88,000 were left, 400 being quickly taken up by the far-right rioters, leaving only 100 places, either to be given to more rioters or – possibly saved for those who took advantage of the Tory government’s bonfire of red tape. It is noted but not yet spoken how quickly some prosecutions can occur, while others linger in old manila folders. A jail-house solution is being acted on as I write. 1700 ‘low risk’ prisoners are being released across the country today. We are assured ‘High risk prisoners are not being released’. But that depends on your point of view, who is high risk or low risk, to whom? Prison staff are already struggling with this new check-list of red tape with things to be done to get those lads and lassies out of the prison gates. There is no time to wonder who will receive them, where they can go, who will support them, or will they just find it safer to return to lock-up. Will they leave enough room for the Right Honorable gentlemen and business leaders to maybe one day sit on benches beside them?

This afternoon the government just approved Chancellor Rachael Reeves’s bill to cut the fuel payment allowance given to pensioners last year. Not many people are saying the obvious – that the allowance was a double-hitting ‘take that’ act from the past Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak, first as a sop to mop up any old voters who might have put an x in his box on election day, and secondly to skewer the next government with less money in the kitty and an unpopular choice to make. But Sir Keir and the labour party still have some political support from raising pay for essential workers in the National Health Services and then to the train-drivers, thereby keeping that union at bay – for the moment.

Sir Keir has not traveled far this summer. He’s been busy reading the manual and fixing the government’s old bike whose chain keeps falling off and brakes need new pads. In Ireland he met the Irish Prime Minister Simon Harris to ‘reset the UK’s relationship with Ireland’. There was also a visit to Paris renewing his friendship with France’s new Prime Minister Michel Barnier. Both are detail-oriented men, and keen to connect rather than disagree. French government being what it is at the moment, Emmanuel Macron’s appointment of Michel Barnier as the new Prime Minister makes England look relatively stable and calm.

And so for excitement – rather than war – we ready ourselves for the upcoming US presidential debate which will have happened by the time this letter airs. It is more nervous-making than any football match with the stakes high for the US and the world. Even those who are not counted will feel the waves of power as they settle in November.

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

Supported by https://www.murchstudio.com

On the Moor

August 11, 2023August 30, 2023 / aggiemurch / 1 Comment

Written and produced by Muriel Murch with WSM by my side

*Pictures posted online by Greenpeace UK on Thursday showed the protesters on top of the property while a banner read “RISHI SUNAK – OIL PROFITS OR OUR FUTURE?”*

Rishi Sunak and his family have all gone on holiday leaving England and the remainder of the United Kingdom in tatters. So it was no surprise that when the five Greenpeace ‘Stop Oil’ activists knocked on the door of Sunak’s country home in North Yorkshire and nobody opened the door, they felt free to climb onto the rooftop of the grade II-listed manor house and drape oil-black fabric over it before posing with their ‘Stop Oil’ Banner in front of the house – protesting against the government’s decision to expand North Sea oil drilling. There is – naturally – to be an inquiry – as to how and why the Prime Minister’s house was left so unattended. Surely there was some surveillance in place. But as Sunak has begun to show his real colors – under the tiniest bit of pressure on a radio program (listeners take note) we have seen his business management underbelly and once more our hopes – why do we even have them? – are dashed. What is Rishi doing looking to lift the 20 mph speed limits in some small residential neighborhoods while issuing new licenses for North Sea Oil drilling? I’m remembering – not that long ago – when the new King very pointedly invited the new Prime Minister to speak at a reception the King was giving for world leaders gathering before a conference on climate change. Rishi popped over to the conference in a private jet to smile and show up. But now he reminds us that ‘you can take a horse to water but you can’t make him drink’.

So it is with renewed respect we watch the Mayor of London Sadiq Khan, with his bushy eyebrows, sticking to his guns with the expansion of London’s low emission zone, saying tackling the climate emergency and air pollution are “bigger than party politics”. While those in parliament waffle and wave according to their party’s policies, Khan is staying true to his course. He is winning some and losing others. Hundreds of doctors have urged politicians to stand firm on initiatives to tackle air pollution, warning that they see its “devastating health consequences” in patients on a daily basis. Air pollution is the single largest environmental risk to public health, linked to between 28,000 and 36,000 UK deaths a year. Air pollution affects every one of us from before we are born into old age. I remember in 1966 looking into the chest of a young Mexican 16-year-old boy who had only been in the city for six weeks. His lungs were already pinpointed with black city pollution.

As I write, the Bibby Stockholm barge is receiving its first asylum seekers – refugees – today. There was a small stall – was this going to be a fire trap? But though Amnesty International calls the barge and its use a ‘Ministerial cruelty’, food will be served in the canteen tonight.

A combination of our 58th wedding anniversary, a small window of time, with the excuse to see a beloved old friend, and the long-anticipated search for Murches – dead more than alive – takes us to Devon and the northern end of Dartmoor.

The two-carriage train runs on old tracks – clickety clack, clickety clack – from Exeter-St. David to Okehampton, slowly rolling past the rows of not-yet-old oak trees marking the hedgerows separating pastures as some far-thinking farmers return to the old ways. The hedgerows are made of stone with some post and rail. There is little wire to be seen. The clouds are hanging low as if chasing the fields into the sea. There is no taxi stand at the Okehampton train station, but drivers swing in and out around train arrival times to see if they can hook a passenger and soon we are caught. But our man has only lived in these ‘ere parts for six years, “A second marriage,” he says, and driven for two which may explain the very long route that brought us through cow pastures – where he had to be reminded to close the gates – with a herd of fine healthy Devonshire cows, and the rubbish dumpster bins, to the back of the hotel for 27 pounds thank you very much. This one is not yet a local.

We are staying at the most elegant and expensive of hotels at Gidleigh Park which carries just the slightest breath of Fawlty Towers to remind us we are in England. After we check-in, there is time for a walk to the hamlet of Murchington. From the hotel, we dip into the woodlands of an ancient forest of Oak and Beech trees where the River Teign runs freely alongside of the path. This is the wilderness of fairies and Robin Hood. We leave the forest for the lanes that are as narrow as I remember them and the bracken is mid-summer high allowing the brambles to twine over and around the long fronds while wild white yarrow and pale orange columbine wave gently where they can. The couch grass remains stubbornly growing and uneaten by the cattle or sheep in the pastures. It’s a good climb up the hill before going down into the dale and finding the old sign of Murchington where Beatrice posed forty years ago. The few cars that pass are careful enough to let us squeeze into the bracken and it isn’t until we crest the hill – before the final dale – that we meet another traveler on the road. She is short and quite round, walking in country clothes with a fine leather hat, and two poles. She is moving slowly and when we first pass her taking a talking break with a motorist “Are we far from Murchington?” I ask, “Just down there. I live in Upper Murchington.” so we carry on. Murchington is now a hamlet having only a few houses with the church being decommissioned in 1975 and there is no central place of worship or community. Sometimes a hamlet is a small group of Kinsmen, no larger than an extended family or clan, though there are no Murches living in Murchington, nor could we find trace of any. On our return – there is not a lot to see in Murchington – our fellow traveler is now polling on the other side of the hill and we pause together. “I like your hat,” says Walter, and that is all it takes to learn about her two children, in Texas and Portugal, far away from this widowed mother who has just had double knee surgery and is walking alone along a country lane.

Back at the hotel and we change for dinner. To dine here is an event and joining us are my oldest friend from Nursing school 60 years ago, Sally, and her daughter Emma who is a leading conservationist with her Dartmoor’s Daughter tours of Dartmoor. There are screams of delight and so much laughter when we see each other and the tears of joy would fall but that we are both – even at 80 – mindful of mascara. When dinner is served it behooves us to pay attention for the care, flavor, and presentation is exquisite, though a far cry from the gnawing on bones by the forest fire that could have been here mere centuries ago.

*Hand-tinted postcard of Murchington, c. 1910 showing Woodlands Farm and the Anglican chapel (with railings)*

The next day is for searching for those long-dead Murches that we are pretty sure are lying about in the Church graveyard. But first, there is morning coffee – at a small cafe where the local artists gather- in the town of Chagford. The four tables that have been put together for us take up almost half of the cafe space. We are late – Richard – our taxi driver – knows his way about, but then there are cattle and ponies on the road and hellos to be shared. Immediately when we arrive fresh coffee is served and we split up – the conversation rushes deeply into the arts at one end of the table and conservation and humanity at the other. It’s a wonderful way to spend a Saturday morning – with people who care – reinforcing each other – encouraging by just showing up – before we wave our goodbyes and slip away into the day.

*James Bowden & Son Hardware & Moorland Centre*

It is beginning to rain – a soft rain – as Sally guides us to the hardware shop that sells everything you need at home and more enticingly has a museum room in the back. It is here that we find the first evidence of George Murch, wheelwright, who sold this shop to James Bowden in 1862. The little room that sells the boots would have been his first shop room. It is comforting to know that we both come from working stock a wheelwright and Slater, such names carry the trades of our forefathers. And more than one Murch married into the Perryman family from Stancombe, giving me full license to go ahead with cider making. As the soft rain gets stronger Sally leaves us at the Chagford churchyard of St Michael the Archangel where someone did what we all mean to do with our boxes of old photographs – gone through the graveyard and mapped out as to whom is buried where – it doesn’t take any time at all to find one of George’s sons, William but not George. William’s gravestone is still upright but leaning a bit as most in the ‘old’ graveyard are. We stand in the rain and think about those lives. The ones that came before us – not so very long ago – was William the one who stayed behind so that James could leave? Or was James always restless – the one who would venture out no matter what? He never named a son of his after his father. These are stories we may not know but only imagine.

On Sunday morning there is a knock on the door and our morning tea, toast, and flaking-everywhere croissant arrives. We are rested and ready to leave with Emma at 8.15 a.m. for a 9.30 start on our guided Wool Walk. After picking up Sally and a friend, Emma sets off at a roaring pace along those single-lane roads and we are soon out on the moor which stretches before us with heart-holding beauty. The sheep are grazing and resting beside the road along with small herds of cows and ponies. Low patches of late gorse hold tightly to the beginning blooms of heather.

The walk is led by – I quote – qualified Hill and Moorland Leader, Emma Cunis aka Dartmoor’s Daughter, and Kristy Turner, Curator of the Dyeing on Dartmoor exhibition at the Museum of Dartmoor Life. Emma and Kristy give us a little introductory talk and we share our names and reasons for walking this Sunday morning. The walk is billed as ‘Easy’ and as we set off Emma acknowledges that we will be of different walking abilities: some fast, some in the middle, and some – a little slower. It doesn’t take long for me to realize I am among the latter- more than a little slower – and this sobers me as I miss the woman I used to be.

This morning Sally wrote “It came to me last night, we are a bit like ancient oak trees, a bit bent and gnarled, but the inner strength keeps us going. So from one Oak tree to another, take care of your roots and branches but wave your leaves merrily into the air whenever you get the chance.” This is friendship and sounds like good advice for us all.

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

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

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

A Month in Lockdown London

April 22, 2020 / aggiemurch / 3 Comments

A month in Lockdown London

Early morning walkers are wrapped up warmly against the nipping wind that dances below the sun and tosses infrequent April showers across the country. The warm winter has brought green aphids out to suck on my roses. Every morning I brush them off and say thank you to the ants who are trying to devour them as quickly as they appear.

Walking past our local supermarket, the wind added to the chill of watching the long line of one-person one-cart each distanced apart, shuffling along the wall around to the waiting guard at the store’s entrance. It still feels too dangerous to shop there and not all right to ask someone to go for us. So we stay close to home shopping in the village and getting used to doing without the simplest things. It has been two weeks since I saw Philadelphia creme cheese in the dairy cooler. This week there is no mayonnaise and I pluck the last bag of risotto rice from the shelf.

Listening to the daily news bulletins from the government it is clear that they are not ‘telling the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.’

Health care workers, transport, postal, delivery and essential service personnel are becoming increasingly distrustful of, and frustrated by, the government. There are no state governors here to overturn and bring clarity to the federal shambles. The major of London, Sadiq Khan, the son of a bus driver, needs union pressure to catch up, trying to make all transport workers safer and promote the use of face masks for public places where the correct social distancing cannot be kept. His frustration is palpable on the news clips where he is seen. Since before the weekend a shipment from Turkey of Personal Protection Equipment for medical personnel had been promised. Today we learn that it was only officially asked for on Sunday! and is now due (again) to arrive today. Turkey – the country once demonized to help win the Brexit vote.

Beech Tree in the Wilderness of Regent’s Park

This is week four of our London shelter in place and the government has decreed at least three more weeks. But over this weekend with the Spring sun shining and the air warm, there was a casual feeling from people that this will not affect them. We walked through a wilderness area of Regent’s Park, where couples and families were picnicking under the trees, hanging out where old London tramps like to make their camps. Impromptu soccer games were played, though the goal posts and nets are all put to one side of the pitches. Hardly anyone was wearing masks but we were. The last of our table napkins have been turned into masks. A bag on the front door holds more fresh napkins from friends. They are waiting, cocooned like caterpillars to metamorphose into white butterfly masks.

From Table napkins to Face masks Photo by WSM

Mr Habtu works for Addison Lee the car hire firm. His hours are rough and spontaneous and he is still working. Who are the people who need his services? He has a wife and three growing boys to support. Every time I see him drive away I worry more than a little and yet am grateful for him that he has a job, is able to work and provide for his family.

This morning another book arrived through the letter box. ‘The Great Influenza’. Written by John M. Barry published in 2004 and picked up as one of the three books by G.W. Bush as a vacation read in 2005.

On opening it up I am immediately caught and it looks like Thomas Cromwell’s death in ‘The Mirror and the Light’ may have to wait a little longer. Glancing through The Great Influenza I am stopped by the end. Though one is not supposed to quote from books the two concluding paragraphs bear repeating at this moment in time.

“Those in Authority must retain the public’s trust. The way to do that is to distort nothing, to put the best face on nothing, to try to manipulate no one. Lincoln said that first and best. A leader must make whatever horror exists concrete. Only then will people be able to break it apart.”

And there is hope in the world as we read of Jacinda Ardern, the Prime Minister of New Zealand managing her country through this crisis followed by the delicious news that the governments of Poland and Denmark are refusing to give financial aid to companies that are registered off shore.

Primrose Hill is embraced on three sides by The Regent’s Park, the Canal and then the railway heading away from the city center. Walking home through the park we paused on the bridge over the canal. In these last few weeks the canal water has become so clear that the shallow bottom was visible. The sunlight was strong and sparkled through the trees while the ducks flew in pairs along its path. Such is the stillness of the air that for the first time in twenty years we can hear the trains clatter quietly by – leaving us all behind.

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