Board Games

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 through, and was more than appropriate given that we were recording my book ‘Harvesting History While Farming the Flats.’ 

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 death. 

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.

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 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. 

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 people to protest in peace for peace.

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 bad happens to Charlie and the show is disrupted.