It’s Only Going to Get Worse

September 9, 2025 / aggiemurch

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Israel continues to bomb Gaza, targeting hospitals and journalists.

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

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

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

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

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

Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping stand together

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

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

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

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

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

Step Right This Way

May 27, 2021 / aggiemurch / 1 Comment

Step right this way –

Recorded and Knit together by WSM

And we are back in Belarus. On Sunday when the journalist Roman Protasevich boarded a plane in Greece, he was already nervous, texting back to colleagues that he believed someone was following him. The plane was under an hour away from Vilnius in Lithuania when the announcement came, “This is your captain speaking. We have received information of a possible bomb on board and are to be diverted to Minsk”. As a Soviet-era MiG-29 fighter jet, ordered by President Lukashenko, came alongside to escort the Ryanair plane to Minsk, Roman and his girlfriend must have really felt fear. Passengers were taken off the plane, claiming their luggage laid out across the tarmac as the charade continued. But it was Roman Protasevich who was the luggage to be collected by the two Belarusian secret service men also on board the plane. Protasevich was detained, with his girlfriend, accused of organizing last year’s protests against Alexander Lukashenko’s regime. Ryanair said that the situation had been “out of its hands”. The plane was over Belarusian airspace when it was diverted to Minsk though it was closer to the Lithuanian capital, Vilnius.

Here Dominic Raab, the UK foreign secretary, can tut-tut away, grateful that, for this moment at least, we are not a part of the European Union. The US has also joined the tut-tut brigade and most of the responsibility will fall to the slight but firm shoulders of Ursula von der Leyen and the Polish prime minister Mateusz Morawiecki who accused Lukashenko of a “reprehensible act of state terrorism”. As of today European flights are no longer flying over Belarusian airspace and Belarusian planes can no longer fly through Europe. That will be a lot of detours. The incident is alternately described as a hijack and/or a criminal offense, (I’m not sure of the difference) but Alexander Lukashenko doesn’t care. He has got his man and thumbed his nose at Europe and the western world at the same time. This must call for a phone call chuckle and a drink with his chum Vladimir Putin.

There is an English saying, ‘Ash before the oak, in for a soak, oak before the ash, in for a splash’. And so it is proving this May where the Ash tree leaves are already a mature green while the oaks remain delicate and pale. But umbrella raised above the wind and rain we strode out on Sunday, taking the 168 bus down to the the south bank of the river where the wind blew even as the rain stopped. Stepping down to the river from the Waterloo bridge we walked – among people – many still masked – along the banks of Old Father Thames. The river-water was mud-brown with tide hurried wavelets shaking like a dog coming in from a run. The cafes were open, the open-air bookstall up and running outside of the British Film Institute and clean public toilets close by. ‘Spending a Penny’ now costs a pound – no change given. At the bright orange carousel a young man fishes deep into his pockets giving me change for my two pound coin. Someone is making a pretty penny with these necessary facilities.

We walked past the London Eye, looking so huge from the ground, and then under the Westminster Bridge through to the “Wall of Hearts.” Painted on the wall that surrounds St. Thomas’s Hospital it faces the river and the Houses of Parliament. Organized by Matt Fowler, whose father died from the virus, each heart is for another death. To date over 128,000 lives have been lost in the United Kingdom. The 150,000 hearts already painted will be used up soon enough as family members continue to come and write, commemorating the names of their beloveds in all the languages that make up this country.

The wall covers the length of the two old prestigious hospitals Guy’s and St. Thomas’s, now merged as one. Looking high above the wall, there are still old stone arches crumbled and moss-laden leading from the hospital’s beginnings in history through to the buildings of today. May holds Nurses’ Day and I am thinking of Dame Cicely Saunders, who trained here, first as a nurse then as medical social worker and finally as a physician. It was here she pioneered her palliative care treatments before founding St. Christophers Hospice in 1967, expanding to community home care in 1969.

The wall ends bringing us to the Lambeth Bridge and the Lambeth Garden Museum which must wait for another day.

“The BBC is in a dangerous place at the moment, and people like me have a special duty to be careful about what they say,” said Andrew Marr last week. And I can’t even remember what scandal that was about, for now an old chestnut has come back to haunt them.

After 25 years an inquiry has finally been completed into the Martin Bashir 1995 panorama interview with Princess Diana. And this week Prince William spoke publicly. His comments almost bypassing Bashir, going straight to the jugular of the BBC. He called for them to never air the program again and blasted the BBC top brass for presiding over a “cover-up”, rather than lay the blame squarely with rogue reporter Martin Bashir who used fake bank statements to falsely claim Diana’s inner circle were selling information on her to the press. Heads have already begun to roll with resignations here and there. No doubt this will lead to another inquiry, but it will have to wait in line as there are many files already stacked in the constipated bowels of Westminster.

Palace of Westminster UK Parliment from across the river

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

A Bumpy Road Ahead

December 31, 2020February 12, 2021 / aggiemurch / 1 Comment

Recorded and Knit together by WSM

So speaks Michael Gove, Minister of the Cabinet. Still not sure what that is – but not so bumpy for the young masked bandit who whizzed through the cul-de-sac on his mid-morning errand with a delivery on the hill. Dressed completely in black, one could say against the cold, the lad stood on his pedals as he hopped his bike over the curbs and up this street to find his assigned buyer. Another game of cops and robbers plays out but without the cops anywhere in sight. The Primrose Hill park is to be closed from 10 p.m. on New Year’s Eve through to 5 a.m. New Year’s Day. An effort to prevent a bumpy jolt into the New Year.

But the continental truckers and haulers have not been so lucky – some managed to get home for Christmas while over 600 were stuck in their lorries on the Kent motorway heading into Dover. Naturally, the army was called in, to calm the frustration and rising rage while conducting tests on drivers for what is now dubbed ‘The English Virus.’ Transport Secretary Grant Shapps, says that “Things are Moving” – though not what you might call ‘up to speed’. Once the tests come back negative, then drivers are allowed to travel on to France. But some will still be waiting as the New Year arrives, along with all the ‘new’ paperwork that comes into effect next Thursday.

There is much talk of the Astra Zeneca Vaccine from Oxford being ready to roll off the assembly line and into the hospitals and GP offices as early as next week, but why oh why am I not holding my breath on this?

Like many people who are unable to visit with our families, we have been saved from total isolation by Skype and Zoom. This weekend saw us Zooming with our families from California to Utrecht, Face-timing with friends and then a Skype visit with an older cousin in South Africa. While talking with Ian I sunk into a deeper understanding of the global reach of this pandemic for our generation.

“What do you do?”

“Well not very much Ann. We go to the market once a week and going out for our Christmas meal was an exception.” He was saying what everyone we know of our age is saying. We are all staying at home, slipping out for the necessary shopping only when we must – and we are among the lucky ones.

The Brexit deal was finalized on Christmas Eve and the British ministers handed a 1500 page ‘memo’, to read during the holiday break before Parliament reconvenes in January. Prime Minister Johnson suggested reading it after Christmas lunch. ‘Unbelievable’ is the word I have used far too often this year. Here is another off-hand move by Boris Johnson and his cronies to put one over on the government and the people. It is blatant school-house bully-boy tactics, giving an impossible task, and – I am at a loss for words to describe it all. And maybe that is the point – that we fold, in some apathetic despair.

And the fishermen and women? Ah well, they have been pushed downriver, and out with the tide, a knotty problem to be revisited in five more years. The draft agreement stating that: “Sovereign rights being asserted on both sides for both the purpose of exploring, exploiting, conserving and managing the living resources in their water,” sounds like a load of old herring to me.

But when listening to Ursula von der Leyen give her closing speech at the end of it all, I wanted to weep for the sheer civility of her words. Europe may well be able to leave Brexit behind, but England will be left cleaning out the slops for long time to come.

News from other parts of the world has taken a back seat during this Christmas holiday break. It is hard to learn what is happening in Belarus and Poland. But news did come through that Zhang Zhan, a 37-year-old former lawyer and citizen journalist who was arrested in May while reporting from Wuhan, has been sentenced to four years in jail for “provoking trouble”. She is among a handful of young dissidents – if you like – voices if you prefer – who are being punished for speaking out, sharing the information they have been given with the world. 10 or the 12 young refugees fleeing to Taiwan are also up for trial, with a forgone conclusion as China uses a heavy hand to keep control of information and news leaking from its shores.

The throngs of people, families, friends gathered together, mostly unmasked, all walking up the Broadwalk though the park on Sunday, shocked and stunned us as we swung onto a path less traveled to see the architecture of 200 years ago through the bare branches of the trees lining the outer circle of the park.

But along the Broadwalk is another tale. This autumn there were no shining brown conkers falling from the Horse Chestnut trees for children to pick up and stuff into their pockets. And then, one day, the first tree was felled, its thick branches lying executed on the grass beside the trunk which still stands. A few wood chips told of the machines crushing the smaller branches. First found in the trees in 2002, the little moth, Cameraria Ohridella and its even tinier caterpillars dig and eat into the leaves, slowly starving the trees and turning them brown as if autumn has come too soon. Such slow decay, one death feeding another life, cannot be tolerated in the pristine Royal Parks. In the New Year the machines and men will be back at their work, putting old friends out of their misery, and making way for the new.

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

Losing

December 17, 2020February 12, 2021 / aggiemurch

Recorded and Knit together by WSM

Late afternoon becomes early evening with the December drizzle falling softly as I turn from Marylebone High Street onto George Street on Saturday afternoon. Sitting and rocking on the ground outside of the metal railings surrounding St. James’ Roman Catholic Church, sits a woman. I have seen her here before. Reaching into my pocket I check, that yes I do have some coins ready and waiting. As I bend to give into her old paper coffee-cup she beams up at me with such an engaging, albeit tooth-shy, smile that we talk.

“Do you have somewhere to sleep?”
“Ooh yes they are very good to me, I am so grateful. But I do have to buy my own food.” We talk some more about accommodation at this time and then I ask her,
“Where are you from?” and have to ask her to repeat herself.
“Russia. I am from Russia, then I spent several years in Switzerland but they let me come back here and I am (she repeats) so grateful.”

She is smiling all the time, and rocking from side to side and I wonder at her story. So many Eastern European women came to Great Britain, and America, looking for a refuge, a better life an escape from what? I wondered. They were all working women in one way or another. Some got lucky, were successful if you like, such as Melania Trump who started life as Melanija Knavs of Yugoslavia, then Slovenia, and finally, at the moment, the United States of America. While some, like this smiling lady sitting on the pavement outside of a Catholic church in the soft rain and evening light, were not. But she looks like she will make it through the winter, though you never know.

It was only sixteen months ago that David Cornwall, John le Carré, was sitting beside me at the theater for a friends and family screening of Coup 53. It was wonderful that he came to see the film, understood so clearly the behavior and involvement of MI6 and the CIA in the take-down of Mohammad Mosaddegh. His understanding and wholehearted approval of the film led to him giving the team his total support and some wry comments of what to watch out for: “You have no idea how deep they will go.” In the subsequent months his remarks proving remarkably true. But as well as government coups, we talked of grand-children and the new best next love affairs in our lives. The news of his death on Sunday came like the news of a friends death and in the outpouring of tributes to him, so many said the same. His joy in writing was evident on every page. His literary skills were honed like a fine musician playing his instrument: piano, saxophone, violin or words on paper.

On Sunday, over a dinner of scallops and turbot, discussions between Boris Johnson and Ursula von der Leyen took place in Brussels. They were described as ‘lively and frank’ in one paper and Johnson as unbelievably arrogant in another report found on Twitter, that did not make it to the papers. But Ursula held her ground against Boris and after his incredible outburst of rudeness the turbot was dispatched quietly and quickly. It doesn’t sound as if desert was on the menu. There were ten minutes of discussion after supper, some separate statements were sent out, “Very large gaps” are said to remain between the two sides, according to a No 10 source. Von der Leyen said the two sides’ positions “remain far apart” and that their teams will reconvene to try to resolve issues: and then it was away and back to their rooms. Was it Saturday that Boris suggested bringing in the Royal navy to patrol the UK Waters, and Ursula had spoken with a subdued but visible smile of the UK’s wish for “Sovereignty, if you like’ and by Sunday, when the discussions were supposed to stop, both sides had agreed to carry on.

Johnson was not happy when blocked from talking with Angela Merkel and Emanuel Macron, as he tried to weasel his way around from meeting with Ursula. Ursula, as head of the European commission, has done a fine job of herding cats, as in twenty-seven nations, to one agreement. After the Sunday phone call exchange, “I’ll call you,” the EU and UK have promised to go the extra mile. Johnson seems at a loss with this strong and immaculately turned-out attractive woman. It is hard to separate the personal man from the political and when he did put forward sending the navy out to protect British waters, the public embarrassment crosses generations and classes. In past interviews Le Carré has spoken of his time as a teacher at Eton School.

“What you have to understand about the Etonian is that he is not taught to govern, he is is taught to win.” And as Malaparte has said, “Everyone would like to win but not everyone is capable of losing.”

Meanwhile the COVID-19 vaccines are beginning to be given in England. The few pictures of seniors in wheelchairs may be cheerful but are not yet reassuring. London and large parts of the North of England are heading back into the Tier 3 restrictions this week and it looks like there are rough waters ahead. Health Secretary Matt Hancock asks for caution when doing what we have all been promised we can do, travel to visit family. Winnie the Pooh’s bouncing Tiger has turned to a sad Eeyore and understandably so.

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