A couple of days ago, I was flicking through the columns of the newspaper. before going to bed only to discover that the doyen of BBC correspondents, Mark Tulley who was the BBC’s Indian correspondent had died only the day before. I had not heard the news announced on the BBC as I thought it would have been but my son had heard about it. Mark Tulley lived his life half in England and half in India but actually preferred India as a place in which to live and was fluent in Hindi. But he had interesting domestic arrangements with a wife here in England and a quasi-wife, a fellow journalist with who he lived in India for the other half of the year and who actually spoke better Hindi than he did, according to the obituary. When people in India asked where the BBC offices were, people were puzzled but when asked for Mark Tulley’s house, they knew it (and I think the BBC actually transmitted from premises above his living accommodation) I seem to have been listening to Mark Tulley for decades and it is very hard to think who could replace him but he was 90 years old and I suppose could not go on for ever. He had quite a ‘plummy’ English accent but I think India had lost a very good friend and advocate for the sub-continent and I, for one, will miss him (as was the case with Alastair Cooke and ‘Letter from America’ in times gone by)
There is a report from the BBC American correspondents that they have never known America to be as divided a society as the USA is today. Evidently, in Minneapolis the community are forcing Trump and the ICE agents to moderate their brutish, para-military invasion of their streets and communities whilst in neighbouring red (i.e. Republican) and Trump supporting states the response to the judicial murders seems to be a shrug of the shoulders and the attitude ‘What do you expect if you take a gun to a rally?’ But the Minneapolis victim had a gun which was legally licensed and which he was entitled to carry with him almost anywhere. It is an extraordinary facet of America that although firearms are strictly prohibited in the passenger cabin of airplanes at US airports, they can be legally transported in checked baggage if they are unloaded, locked in a hard-sided container, and declared to the airline at check-in. Despite these regulations, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) has intercepted a record number of firearms at airport security checkpoints in recent years, with over 6,600 guns stopped in 2024, approximately 94% of which were loaded. We are also experiencing polarisation in our own society although not yet on the scale seen across the Atlantic. The forthcoming by election in Manchester is a case in point because it could be that Labour who have held this seat since before the second World War (i.e. for some 80-90 years) may be challenged and lose the seat to Reform on the right and be squeezed by the Greens under their dynamic new leader on the left. It is being predicted that Labour could actually come third in this election which might trigger an attempt to get rid of Keir Starmer as Labour Leader.
Later in the morning, I decided to try my luck at the so-called ‘chatty table’ in the local Methodist Centre near the centre of the town. I was more fortunate in my choice of people with whom to chat than has been my experience recently. When I sat down, the first person with whom I chatted had arrived too late to enter the ‘Strength and Balance’ class so was treating herself to a coffee. It transpired that she had spent quite a lot of time in Ireland and she very much preferred the sense of community and friendship that had found in that country. Nonetheless, we compared notes of our own experiences of (Catholic) education and compared notes of how we both had felt badly treated on occasions. Then this lady left and continued my conversation with her friend who also attends the sane Tai Chi class that I normally attend on a Thursday. She was explaining to me how she had been rehearsing a eulogy that she was due to give on the occasion of the funeral of her godfather with whom she had been very close for decades – closer, in fact, than some members of his own family. She had experienced several decades of marriage before her husband had run off with a younger women which does, unfortunately, sometimes occur and she explained to me how she had lived her life after that traumatic event. After all of this, I popped into Waitrose in order to pick up my newspaper and a birthday card and then made my way home where I expected to see my domestic help – but she had been called into a sudden ‘Team’ meeting at her normal place of work so had to leave a bit earlier than planned.
Today, history has been made with the legal confirmation of the very first female Archbishop of Canterbury. Dame Sarah Mullally has been confirmed as the first-ever female Archbishop of Canterbury, some 1,400 years after the role was created. The ceremony at St Paul’s Cathedral in London also confirmed the 63-year-old as the first woman to assume the spiritual leadership of the Church of England in its nearly 500-year history. Dame Sarah, who is a mother-of-two, is now officially the 106th Archbishop of Canterbury. Her personal story is quite an extraordinary one as she had previously been the UK’s Chief Nursing Officer (CNO) from 1999 to 2004, serving as the youngest person in that role at age 37. A former nurse and NHS leader, she was made a Dame Commander in 2005 for her contribution to nursing. It is extremely rare for any individual, of either gender, to become the chief officer of two completely different organisations and it will be interesting to see if she can rise to the challenge of leading the Church of England and the Anglican Communion as a whole. This is because the Archbishop of Canterbury is automatically regarded as Head of the world wide Anglican communion but the churches in some countries take very different stances towards even the ordination of female priest (let along bishops and archbishops), LGBT+ rights and even some theological divisions such as evangelical versus ordinary members of the Church of England.