Episódios
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While politics plays out on the world stage England continues to play out a mix of lorry-like thievery and home-grown purity. The world famous cheese market of Neal’s Yard Dairy was cleanly relieved of 22 tons of cheese in 950 wheels of cheddar valued at £300,000. While the police seriously consider deliveries to Russia or the Middle East, chef Jamie Oliver was more down to earth tweeting, “There has been a great cheese robbery. Some of the best cheddar cheese in the world has been stolen,” and added “If anyone hears anything about posh cheese going for cheap, it’s probably some wrong’uns.”
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But suddenly there are quick soft running footsteps, and a child’s voice shouting “I ain't’ done nothink.” More running footsteps, a longer stride and a uniformed youth catches up with the child, who is clutching a brown paper shopping bag and still yelling. “Let me go, I ain't’ done nothing.” Faces lift from the phones and those in the taxi queue look as the young officer catches the barely clothed child wearing shorts and a very oversized t-shirt.
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But the Green Memorial Hospital is in the Northern province of Jaffna, a strong Tamil district and during out time the war was still active..... Everyone was very polite but clear, explaining as gently as they could that the troubles precluded them sending anyone with us to Jaffna and certainly not allowing us on the trains where murder was not uncommon.
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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.
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St. Thomas’s Hospital was first dedicated to serving the poor, the destitute and homeless and though it has become a world renowned teaching hospital it has remained open ever since. It is seeming and appropriate that the wall that cradles the hospital close to the Thames and faces the Houses of Parliament is still decorated with painted hearts and messages commemorating the thousands who died in the Covid epidemic that began in January of 2020
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Edna arrived at the radio station in a fuss. Her plane has been delayed and her luggage was lost. She was as tiny and Irish as I was tall and English but quickly I saw that we were both nervous. Edna upset at the loss of her luggage and the fact that her silver pendant had rubbed a stain on her white jumper. I was terrified of her intellect and sexuality.
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But how will it play out in greater America? Is America really ready to put all of its prejudices aside? Kamala Harris is: a woman, a caramel-colored woman of mixed race with a Jewish husband, a lawyer, and from California. Now there will be endless discussions - but maybe it is a time to think, know what we know, what we do not know and, as some say, understand the difference.
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A small grilled window sits facing the square where - at night time - a mother could - between 1660 and 1875 - raise the grill and lay her new-born babe on the rota where friars, on their night-time shift, sat waiting for a delivery, not as midwives for a wanted child, but as caretakers receiving the fruits of enslaved and then abandoned love.
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Mark is deft in drawing out the information he wants from his guests and dropping in, like sweet strawberries, clips from the films they are talking about, for after all it is film that Mark and his audience are here for. But like all good hosts he also turns the questions a little more inward onto the guests.
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The grey sky is pouting - there is no sun - just a half-hearted threat of rain. The London season is muted; the Chelsea Flower Show and Royal Ascot Race week do not shine as brightly in splashing colour across the weekly magazines.
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Finally, after Teresa May 2018 appointment of Brian Langstaff his report has landed in Parliament and is damming. Langstaff was not the protecting Safe Pair of Hands that May’s government had hoped. Hearing the testaments of patients and their families, seeing the look on the faces of politicans and whoever else he spoke with as they lied to him made for a 2000 page plus report that defamed them all.
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In 2008 Eleanor Coppola published her book ‘Notes on a Life’. It did well, though was received with mixed reviews; some people were curious about the life of a Coppola, others about art and relationships, while others understood that a woman’s world is that – a woman’s world – and the challenges that women face, … Continue reading Eleanor Coppola
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The student protests with Pro-Palestinian sympathies about the bombing of Gaza are growing around the world, each country’s universities going about their demonstrations in their own cultural way. On the campuses here in England because so far there are no overt clashes between the students, the administration and police - they are not covered by the evening news. While the young students and some professors already know the cost of speaking out, they are prepared to do so.
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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.
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Andrés’s stride across the world stage is large like the Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who is also untrained in the school of politics. Andrés schooling in the kitchen as Zelenskyy’s on the stage has given both men the skills of hustle, the art of seduction, both slicing and seasoning each connection to fit and join with another. Is it possible that it is these artists that can chip away at the gates of death, calm the storms of war, to bring a peace at the table.
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The farm calls for focus and sends the world of wars further into the outskirts of my mind. Though the horrors that are occurring all the time - everywhere - still return to my consciousness when I try to rest from the chores that face me here.
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But this last weekend I had to mange it - Hollywood - because it is ‘that time of year again’. Oscar was coming. But there is foreplay in the form of the British BAFTA awards appearing in London a month beforehand, like a butler announcing ‘Dinner is served.’ And then in Los Angeles the weekend before the Oscars, the Industry Guilds all giving their awards. It’s a busy time and Hollywood, Beverly Hills and the tentacles of Los Angeles are gratefully twitching and alive with business.
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This single death takes over my consciousness as I think I can imagine it - while the multiple slaughters are that are occurring in Gaza and on the West Bank leaves me sifting through pictures of rubble, hospitals and carnage, not really knowing who or what I am looking at, or for. Navalny’s death has me remembering the South African Activist Steve Biko.
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Looking back on that year, and the politics that were uppermost in so many minds, it is hard to accept where we are now. Everything seems more - nothing seems less - and it is frighting for all of those paying attention. Vanessa, and others who have hit that 80 year date, still struggle and sometimes succeed to put the political and artistic work in a perspective that encourages those who follow.
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- but it is with the stories that hold the slimmest degrees of separation that I carry. We have friends who are housing Israeli refugees in Paris; another young woman who fled Russia now lives with her mother as refugees in Tel Aviv; a Palestinian artist who has been silent since reaching out in the beginning of October. Our 8-year-old grandson’s best friend is from Ukraine, living with his grandmother in The Netherlands. These are the stories I can hold in my heart.
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