Poppycock or false memory day

How can children remember something that happened before they or in many cases even their parents were born or someone they never met? Indeed why  should they even bother? Who benefits from all this? The dead? Long past caring.  The living, then? How? The land fit for heroes threw them on to the jobless scrap heap but every November out came  the bloody poppies and British Bloody Legion with their bloody flags, their bloody medals and their damn bloody marches.

It has become a routine that is only done because it has always been done. This year the PM put his wreath upside down! (titter ye not!) The other guy who wants to be PM turns up even though he has voted against every British military intervention there has been and has fraternized with just about every 'enemy' while he has been an MP, at least he didn't bow his head only because he's too damned ignorant. No-one dare say "Let us stop this nonsense now and get on with our lives". 

As a child I was told that on Remembrance Day we remember those who died in the War. The War then was the Great War, WW1. Now the War is WW2 though that too is fading, Korea (where was that now?), Falklands (oh yeah dimly recall), Afghanistan, Northern Ireland (maybe not so much NI as that wasn't officially a war and besides half the enemy were in the pay of the secret service), any patch of a scrubby useless middle eastern shithole that the British Army has been sent to and come home again having achieved precisely zip and at such a cost ... Ah yes I was told and you tell your children still they must remember these 'sacrifices' and show their respects. What for?

Now memory is as you know a pretty untrustworthy thing at the best of times but if you are going to tell your children stories what do you expect to happen? I was told by my mother that her father's brother joined up at the start of the war; both brothers enlisted together, leaving their jobs in the steel works, joined the Gordon Highlanders (the kilts were a thing back then). Poor old great uncle Thomas however died in the war, I was told, and grandpa married his brother's bereaved fiancée. That's a nice story with such a romantic ending... Or so I was told ... Hmm today I find, thanks to computers and internets that never forget, Great Uncle Tom actually lived to over 70 and died in 1959 and worked in a pawnbroker's shop and was in the Northumberland Fusiliers. Grandpa Joe, was living in a different town to his brother, was actually in the Gordon Highlanders in France from 1915 onwards (I guess something had to be true) and when I knew him as a chain smoking (Capstan full strength or Willy Woodbines) old man he cursed the British Bloody Legion whenever he could, he'd no time for poppies or poppycock. He never, ever mentioned (maybe he forgot) being wounded in 1916 but computers and internets they never forget ...

There I've done with my bit of remembering. Now what? Hmm?

Take up our quarrel with the foe

 

O soothest Sleep! if so it please thee, close

      In midst of this thine hymn my willing eyes,

Or wait the "Amen," ere thy poppy throws

      Around my bed its lulling charities.

                                              John Keats

As cultured folk you'll be aware how for millennia the poppy has signified sleep and forgetfulness in European culture. From the poppy we get opium, morphine and all those other lovely "ines" that make us fall through a hole in the carpet when life becomes too much... 

Whoah! whoah! stop all this liberal thinking right now! For the Royal (& sycophantic) British Legion, for hosts of hoopleheads and fellow travellers, for the whole UK indeed (or so it seems) and even for level headed Canada or at least those parts that love to dwell on the horrors of the last century the poppy has become The Symbol Of Remembrance. Well ha! So much for culture. This craze started in the 1920's as a merchandising scam to sell cloth poppies to help 'rebuild war torn France' (a likely story) or perhaps it was inspired by that really bad and militaristic poem  "Flanders Field" (which at least had the idea of poppies meaning sleep). Whatever, it's too late and the genie is out of the proverbial glass container and you can't tell anyone that this is cultural illiteracy else they look at you as if you have two heads (which I suppose is two more than they have). 

So it comes about that, two years after the celebration (no better word) of the start of WW1, Hull gets a teeny portion of the crazy poppy themed thing that took over the Tower of London.  It's an unimpressive, tawdry splash of  red down the side of the Maritime Museum. Puts me in mind of a slit throat or perhaps a some overly enthusiastic menstrual flux. Certainly does not inspire any thoughts of 'remembrance' despite it being blessed by vicars and cooed over by the hoi polloi ("Oh isn't it beautiful!" 'it', by the way, is supposed to represent the deaths of thousands of men from high explosives, bullets, poison gas and general military incompetence so ... well I just give up!) and idiots in WW1 uniforms standing in front of it like dorks!

Still it attracts folks to town to take piccies (guilty as charged) and of course selfies. Oh the name of this thing? ... Weeping Window

On Newland Avenue the poppies blow ...

It will not surprise you to learn I'm not one for poppy wearing or remembering past wars and all the dead and all that business. My old grandad  joined up to fight in the first European madness; he fancied wearing a kilt so he and his brother joined a Scottish regiment just for that reason! His brother didn't come back. (let's hope insanity does get passed on) Any hoo he would say he had no time for the sycophantic Royal British Legion and their revelling in the horrors of the Somme and so on. So what was good enough for old Joe is good enough for me. Strikes me that every year there's more and more of this enforced, dare I say phoney,  'remembrance' of past hostilities (for example, everyone on TV has to wear a poppy or face obloquy from the self-appointed arbiters of public decency) when a bit, nay, a large dollop of forgetfulness might be in order. Enough of this dwelling on the past.

What we have here is part of a grandly insane scheme by a local lady to knit or crochet over 3000 woollen poppies and plant them in all the flower boxes on Newland Avenue. I suppose it's impressive if that's the sort of thing that impresses you. With the inevitability of the sun rising in the morning some toe rag stole a set of poppies. Go take up your quarrel with the foe ...

A strange day

I took this on my way to vote in the referendum (voted 'Leave' since you ask because, as is well known, I'm a delusional, knuckle-dragging, xenophobic, racist, piece of shit; yes, the eloquent insults of the losing 'Remainers' still flow ...). Appears even the weeds have UKIP's colours ... It's not every day you have a vote to leave the EU and the PM resigns with a self-inflicted shotgun wound to his foot ... interesting times.

Summer meadow in the heart of town

On Blackfriargate a patch of land has been left to sort itself out and that is just what it's doing in a colourful way, of course. This mad mix of poppies, clovers, teasels and grasses is all free and could be available across town and country if councils parked up their grass mowers until Autumn. 

Tall poppy syndrome

Even in these austere days the Council sees fit to go round with herbicide and clear any green growing thing from the base of every roadside post. Further they go round every fortnight with mowers trimming down all the grassy verges. It something they do because they've always done it, an utterly pointless waste of money. Does long grass threaten civilisation or do flowers portend a revolution? What harm would it do to leave things be and let a billion flowers grow?