Letter from A. Broad

There are sweaters needing a soft touch, shirts and pajamas, pillowcases and tea towels, before the trousers pressed with a heavier hand. But as I work through the piles, I slow down. I can read and I can write, can’t I? And I can reach out to other sisters who write.

This summer we did it again. Mostly here in London, as Walter held my less-than-best microphone while correcting my still hopeless dyslexic stumbles over long words and names. My voice and I are old, and with no true acting training we worked in short bursts. Granny Smith apples or big juicy grapes are said to help with such sessions but for me it was to be hard apple cider and honey which got me...

The summer has been long and hard. We retreat to the cottage, subdued by the evening dance between the sun and the moon, wondering at the worth of our work.

And while still a part of the KPFA-FM Drama and Literature Department, I am also gleaning programs for our new small, tiny-at-the-moment station-that-could. Next up in the studio is Sir David Attenborough with his new book, ‘The Private Life of Plants’. I’m more than on home ground and the book is a breeze for me. Sir David is a good old pro.

The card table is balanced on the old coffee table - giving us a square surface on which to play. The fire is on, we are warm. Crumbs from the Dundee cake land on the table and the cards and we brush them to the floor. There are two egg cups perched on the corners of the table. They each hold an ounce of Jameson Whisky. We are poor drinkers and card sharks. But we will play Machiavelli to the deat...

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...

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.

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 ch...

Amidst a mess of gunfire three people are dead and Manchester is wounded. Despite the Prime ministers pleas - never a good sound bite - for the weekend Pro-Palestinian demonstration at Parliament Square in London to stop - it didn’t - and the police moved steadily through arresting nearly 500 silent protesters aged between 18 and 89. England seems too small, in geography and spirit to allow its pe...

Several elephants go around and around a circus ring, trunk to tail, holding onto each other, scared to let go and be separated from the herd. But the elephant trainer cracks his whip calling one to the center and perform a special trick. Lets call this elephant Charlie. Charlie is a good elephant, mature, smart, and expressive as he performs his trick and is well rewarded. Until one day something...

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.

We connect with the friends that we can. There are friends too sick to visit, there are friends who have put their homes back together after the Palasades fires, and friends who are only just beginning. These are the precious moments. 

“Can I ask you?” Of course, “We have a two-year old at home and apart from Paddington Bear what else could I bring her?” Ah, now I was on home, Granny ground and launched into the thrills of “Ant and Bee,” showing her the books on her phone. And even as I explained: “They are different, but friends, you see.” I wondered if that idea would sit comfortably with her - different but friends.

Some of the doctors followed in this film are still alive and working. Some are not. Almost all have been imprisoned, tortured and lost family members.

When asked, the honor guards gathers to perform Nightingale Tribute services for nurses. Like in the military, it consists of the Final Call to Duty. The Nightingale Lamp is lit in the nurse's honor and when a triangle is rung the nurse’s name is called out three times as a request to report to duty. With the last silence, after her name is called, the nurse is announced as retired and the lamp's...

This is a quiet room, saved now for big occasions with family or friends but in this solitary time I take it for my own. The stillness calls me and I welcome it putting my pen to the page bringing immediate and long-past memories together, taking time to talk to the page.

Libraries carry the past forward to the present and into the future. The knowledge and truth stored safely from the Library of Alexandria through to the likes of Wikipedia and The Internet Archive, and all libraries, are the creations of our minds and those looking to control the narratives of history are oft times fearful. It is not that long ago that the burning of books took over from the burni...

As the lights came up the audience of some film makers, film buffs. and children settling in for the Q and A. A young girl who had participated in the fun children’s hour hosted before the film asked Walter “Is Oz real?” and he answered, “Well that is the question isn’t it?” 

But supper has to be quick, we are on location with a gig after all and we walk our way from the restaurant to Horatio's Bar and ‘The Space’ on Brighton Palace Pier. Dusk has arrived and day trippers were leaving the pier as film buffs are arriving, bustling in, ordering a drink or two and settling into the chairs arched around The Space. It is late by the time the last fans leave and we walk back...

It’s the writers, it’s the publishers, and it’s the bookstore owners that come together to give us the books we read. Over the years publishers and publishing, both in big and small houses, has grown and changed how a book gets into our hands and our hearts. It is not often that one gets to sit down with a working  publisher who is willing to talk about the ups and downs of the publishing business...

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.

Even in the worst of times, which for so many people in the world this is, the spring sunshine is bringing warmth and a moment of peace within the despair of their lives.

The forests and parks are the American Jewels, beloved by peoples of all parties, persuasions, income levels, rural and city dwellers alike. And they - we the people - are coming together, supporting where we can the rangers and Park personal dismissed out of hand by the playboys in Washington. 

We are older and need to tidy up our lives. We are not cleaning out the cupboards and barn stalls as we should be, instead have been writing of our work, our lives and worlds together and apart. There are family stories to repeat, cinematic history and community evolution to record.

Lady Pechell was older than the young mothers making do with their ration books, trading eggs and butter from small holdings for gin from goodness knows where. On shopping days during the week they came to Mrs Max’s Café, to be together for an hour. To commiserate about all and everything, trying to put their lives together as the war continued, while Lady Pechall quietly fed me lumps of sugar.