Thank you Jesus

December 15, 2025 / aggiemurch / Leave a comment

Written and recorded by Muriel Murch with WSM by my side

‘Use a Wheelchair’ enough friends and family said that, that it became another ‘if three Russians tell you you are drunk you might want to lie down’ moments. And so, feeling immensely foolish and embarrassed, I did. And each wheelchair led to another brief encounter of sweetness. First up there was Chris at EuroStar. “It’s your lucky day, I’m with you all the way.” And he was – and he easily took on more than just us. Chris was watchful and would spot others who seemed lost and as if they needed more help and guidance. For them too he would quickly point out their way forward.

Feeling foolish in Amsterdam. Photo by BL Murch

It took only a few hours before we were safely tucked into our daughter’s home in Utrecht. The little overnight case holding Beano comics and Cheddar cheese along with the toothbrush was unpacked and we settled into the now ritual Sushi takeout supper the family orders for our first night with them. The Dutch, along with the rest of Europe and the world, do not celebrate the American Thanksgiving holiday, though a different form of Thanksgiving from America may eventually come to pass. A Thanksgiving to be free of the yanked choke-hold that is oozing out of the United States. As I write, motions are being written and presented to the senate that American citizens may not hold more than one passport and visitors to the United States should show five years of email correspondence and social media activity. There goes the United States airline industry for a start.

This little family holds all its traditions dear, those from Argentina and those from America. Assados and barbecues, soccer and football alike and so that weekend the Thanksgiving meal was a lunch on Saturday. Swedish friends with their two children and an American couple who had just recently moved from Ireland to the Netherlands gathered around the table. My Granny jobs had me thinking back to Mudda, my oldest friend’s grandmother, sitting at her daughter’s kitchen table, slicing beans. She would slip me half-a-crown with instructions to bicycle down to the tuck shop at the end of the road and pick up a packet of Craven A cigarettes for her. There would be sixpence left over which she would slip back in my pocket to buy sweets for us later. During those childhood years Mudda fed me my first cigarette. As I took my Granny place with the beans I felt quite virtuous, knowing I had only given David comics. It felt good to sit at the table topping and tailing green beans before peeling the potatoes.

Saturday’s meal was fabulous as was the company. Beatrice has mastered mashed potatoes like I never could. The beans were served with a shallot and balsamic dressing and the turkey – well of course it was perfect – and then there were pies.

Pumpkin Pecan and Apple Pie. Thank you Beatrice.

The conversations flowed over and across Kim’s Game – another Thanksgiving tradition Bea had brought forward from her childhood when we joined friends in Inverness. Animated talks continued until someone picked up the brochure that had been mailed to every household in the Netherlands that weekend. The cover was eye-catching purple and the cartoon figures stood out in relief, as through the pages they showed what to do in case of a drone attack. No enemy was mentioned but the recent Russian drones flying into the airspace of the Netherlands, Poland, Germany, Estonia, Sweden, as well as Ukraine leaves the whole of Europe nervous and jittery – which is just the fun of it for the Russian President. As winter sets in to Northern Europe another country’s president, too far out of reach for those drones, tosses off instructions and memos to President Zelensky. While Ukraine’s President repeats that he will not cede any territories to Russia the infantry troops must hold the ever-increasingly dangerous line while under such constant attacks.

On Sunday our bags were packed in the car and we left Amsterdam for an overnight in Dublin before flying back to California. Both the Irish attendants, for those in need of assistance, in and out of Dublin Airport, were so young and had perfect capped white and even teeth – and I wondered – why. I couldn’t help thinking that once – like young race horses – they had been promising young boxers and that maybe injury had set them aside to languish and grow bald working for Air Dublin at the airport. The tips could be good and it is almost healthy work with all the walking and maybe a better life than working in construction or the restaurant trades.

Flying our bodies 6000 miles across land, sea and any remaining snow-capped mountains leaves them shaking and in turmoil. For the first few nights back in the Hayloft there is a strong full moon over the lagoon and farm. Dawn has barely broken as I lie awake and look out of the glass doors to the fields beyond. The tall eucalyptus trees are only just outlined against the sky. A faint light flickers up and down as a small converted golf cart is driven slowly along the rows of vegetables growing in the fields beyond. The light bobs and then pauses for some minutes before carrying on along the row. The cart is idled and I imagine the Jesuses and Josés of the world wearing thick jackets and pulled-down caps over stained jeans climbing down, knives in hand as they each pull an empty crate from the back of the golf cart before bending down and harvesting from another row of chard. The work and rhythm is repeated as the dawn lightens until the cart is full and they return to the office and waiting truck ready to accept these gifts. For this harvest, working though it is, is a gift to us all. I watch the bobbing light, the dawn rising and even with some early morning kisses I do not fall back to sleep. I must honor the work of Jesus and José with my words – and I do.

Workers mannually harvest ripe produce on Rick and Robyn Purdum’s farm. Fruitland, Idaho. 7/20/2012 Photo by Kirsten Strough via USDA

This has been A Letter From. A Broad Written and read for you by Muriel Murch with WSM by my side and as always supported by Beatrice from MurchStudio

Board Games

December 1, 2025 / aggiemurch / 1 Comment

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

A blast of cold weather pressure from the Atlantic swept in November and sent the temperature below freezing. There were snow drifts in the Scottish Highlands, sending trucks and traffic of all sorts off the roads. The snow swirled down over the Pennines, into the West Country and the Home Counties.

“It’s a winter morning,” I said and moments later the snow began to fall in our corner of London. It didn’t lay on the ground but just shook some warning flurries at the city, ‘Be careful’ the full clouds seemed to say. ‘We are just up the road, out of the bright lights that heat your city, but we could stay here if we chose to.’ Our little bird bath froze over and the remaining plants on the terrace did not move, as if afraid they might crack in the cold. November’s hit was just the forerunner of December’s offerings. These are winter days, errands are done quickly before we come home, almost grateful to have to stay indoors and rummage in the cupboards. These are days for soup and to bring out the boardgames to play with families as the American Thanksgiving holiday reaches us wherever we are. And we will be in Utrecht with that little family for the weekend of Cluedo and gratitude.

Can you guess correctly – Clue or Cluedo? (Photo by Beatrice Murch)

But board games of a far more serious nature are being invented and played in Geneva. The Presidents of America and Russia are staying out of the fray, lobbing spit balls of scrunched old ideas across telephone lines as their hatchet men of the moment re-write the rules of this game. The Ukrainian President keeps Europe and the rest of the world focused with repeated stark reminders of the underlying truth of this conflict, rejecting Putin’s demands for “legal recognition to what he has stolen”. So the chess board – if it is a chess game – remains open – leaving the bishops and knights to battle in the castle while the pawns fall and fail to return. Rules are being made up as this game unfolds. Scrappy bits of paper with early notes are tapped out on keyboards and folded into the games with the first language of the rules appearing in Russian then transcribed into American. All of Europe see this is an uneven match with the French President Macron clear that without deterrence in the Ukraine plan, ‘Russia will come back’. The first blue print was not so much who did what to whom but who gets to take this land and who has to give it up and forfeit its army, land and alliances. Its a crippling squeeze and is played out for real as ruthlessly as any child takes over Mayfair or Park Avenue on the Monopoly board. As I write, there are moves and counter-moves reported with the US and Ukraine continuing to create an “updated and refined peace framework” to end the war while the European countries proposed their own radical alternatives. Thanksgiving and Christmas will come and go before the drone-dropped bombs cease to fall on The Ukraine. The American President is practicing his TACO moves tweeting that ‘Great progress is being made’ while the Russian one lowers his bear head and continues to charge, bombing civilian targets in the Ukraine.

Monopoly Money (photo by Beatrice Murch)

While Europe carries much of the financial burden of Ukraine’s continued resistance the US can’t find the keys to its conscience and continues to hold back resources. It seems that papa Putin still has a firm hand grasped around the collar of that naughty US president. But every time when we watch this three-party card trick, we miss where it has gone. Who holds the cards as Russia the United States and Europe play, moving the ace that is the Ukraine with its oil and wheat. President Zelensky repeats for anyone who needs to hear it again that “The crux of the entire diplomatic situation is that it was Russia, and only Russia, that started this war, and it is Russia, and only Russia, that has been refusing to end it.” We learn all we can each day while at the same time knowing that bombing has not stopped in any of the squabbles and wars around the world.

A map of the Ukraine with Russian infiltration

It is pear season. There are fresh pears in the market and the ones I chose from the grocer are the perfect ripeness for today’s desert of poached pears in wine with cardamon and saffron. I sit at the table peeling them and two have long stalks – so long that I can imagine them just plucked from the tree as the twig with leaves say goodbye.

Ten years ago we bought a Living Christmas tree for a Christmas here in The Cottage. And then – as one tries to do after Christmas – we planted it out in a little corner of the pavement at the end of the parking lot and to our amazement it took hold, the roots going down and finding hidden nourishment, reminding us all that London – like every city – is only as deep as a cement paving stone.

On Sunday, we went out again and put lights and cheap shiny ornaments on it – and it is happy. As the nights begin to close in by tea time the little tree shines, bringing a smile to every passerby.

This has been A Letter From. A Broad Written and read for you by Muriel Murch with WSM by my side and as always supported by Beatrice from MurchStudio

Decisions

November 17, 2025 / aggiemurch / 2 Comments

Decisions,

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

It started with relentless knee pain that would not go away and it was time to see a doctor. Mr. Mazin Ibrahim took one look at my walking and, with experienced confidence, says. “It’s not your knee. It’s your hip, it’s completely worn away and here are the X-rays to prove it.”

It was a slow dance, back and forth, a cortisone injection to the hip, an appointment with a fantastic physical therapist, another determination to lose weight, and for a month or two the cortisone worked – until it didn’t. The pain returned and with it the realization that it was time for ‘The Decision.’ As I begin the emails, phone calls the explanation of schedule, the booking, the payments and the appointments, I have to accept I am on the other side of the nursing desk. Each time I said “I am a nurse too” I can see my nurse dance partners take a deep breath and guide me to their agenda. As Mibaba, the diminutive Philippine nurse, goes through the detailed admission her voice lifts with a musical “Mam” at the end of each question. Before she is finished, she is asking for a full report from my cardiologist. There is no stone this young woman left unturned. Eventually satisfied, she leads me along the corridor where I see a pair of leather-shod feet which I know, just by the way they are pointed, belong on the end of long legs. Mibaba introduces me to Desmond, from Essex and Uganda. He is tall and, as an orthopedic specialist nurse should be, light on his feet. He has seen it all before and fielding my “I’m a nurse too,” slipping into the nurses’ banter and humor. He is laughingly professional with deep knowledge and warmth and we exchange phone numbers.

It’s a 7 a.m start as we arrive at the brightly lit entrance to the Princess Grace Hospital. A cheery Scottish receptionist checks me in, all my paperwork and payment is in order. In the reception area we are joined by other couples. One by one, we are picked up by out admitting nurses and taken to our own private rooms to change… Walter helps me settle in, and himself to the waiting ahead.

And it is in. That seems to be a real screw in there!

Two attendants come with a gurney and I am slipped onto it. The basement is where the action is, the corridor so narrow that there is only room for one gurney at a time – one in, one out. The door to the surgical suite is open and two men are still mopping the floor as we wheel on past them to a blunt-nosed tiny tool shed. There is just room for the gurney to slide in, with the tool benches all around. “Anesthesiologist” He shouts at me through his mask while pointing to the words on his cap. There are two of them, both Indian, both male, doctor and nurse, a team dancing together as they prepare their next patient for the umpteenth time. Sit up, legs over the edge of the gurney and, cradled in the safe arms of the young nurse who holds me as the anesthesiologist calls out, “Don’t move. Be still”. Now this gurney is wheeled into the newly cleaned and mopped surgical suite. There are fresh big blue containers of sterile equipment, the all-male team also clothed in blue, among them is my surgeon, ready to help hoist me from the gurney onto his table. ‘Wait” I want to say, “I haven’t lost enough weight.” Then an oxygen mask covers my nose and mouth and I’m out.

Back in room 312, Walter is waiting. He sits quietly, watching over us all as I look at my numb legs in my big diaper, “better than a catheter” and I have to agree while watching and participating in the incredible disposable waste that clogs our planet. Day moves to night and back to day. Walter walks across the park from home to hospital and back again. Nurses and therapists, their voices blending in a symphony of all those who make up the serving faces of England today, come and go. Dawn is late while, carefully watched, I get up to the bathroom and wash before a reasonable pot of tea shows up at 7.30 with breakfast. My bladder is working unaided – for which I am truly grateful. As a liquid laxative is washed down with an oral suspension of Morphine I am dimly aware that they might not be the best of dance partners. It is not until the next day when Saturday’s supper returns with a vengeance that everyone gets serious about those absent bowel sounds and my discharge is postponed.

The physical therapist pops in to tackle up and down stairs, and so we go up and down the stairs with no problem until the last dose of morphine kicks in and I slide into a chair. Well if this is a way to change this dimension for the next – it’s fine with me.

Then home, bags of drugs, wise unheeded words from the nurses ‘Don’t let the pain get ahead of you’. And I leave the safety of their care. The world of nurses, these are the voices I want to hear. Melodious, musical and on the brink of laughter if you are someone who would let that in.

Back at home there is warmth by the fire, a kind and willing helper for all things, those exercises to be done and the pain iced away. Walter is ever-vigilant as friends come bearing meals. With such care it takes only a few days to accept that this was the right decision and I am going to get better.

October chilled into November and there are distractions. November 4th was an election day in North America. There were celebrations from New York as Zohran Mamdani is voted to be the new Mayor, redistricting passes in California, and governorships going to Democrats Abigail Spanberger in Virginia, and Mikie Sherrill in New Jersey. All this on the night before we sit together watching the fireworks from the remembrance of Guy Fawkes who tried to blow up the Houses of Parliament in 1605. The King and Crown also chose this time to banish Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, to the dark forest of Norfolk. From the depth of next January he will call a corner of the 20,000 acre Sandringham Estate home. It is time to start sorting books from bookshelves and suits from his wardrobe.

While I write, the United States President has risen up from 20,000 leagues under the sea and murky waters of the Eastern Seaboard. Not content to wave his tentacles across the American media, crushing those who displease him he has, in a circular sweep with his pal Benjamin, now focused on the BBC. Searching for a hook which which to snare this big fish they have found a questionable editorial choice from an October 28th Panorama Program last year about the US President.

The hook is tightly embedded, heads have rolled, and the mighty organization is left rudderless with no captain or first-mate to hold the ship steady. Another decision is to be made, apologize or stand firm, or even let the Government make this decision for them. Pontus Pilate did not have it any easier.

This has been A Letter From. A Broad Written and read for you by Muriel Murch with WSM by my side and as always supported by Beatrice from MurchStudio

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

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