Time for poppies

It is Remembrance Sunday today, a fittingly grey and gloomy Sunday. I have not much to say about it, except that I will try this year to keep my poppy on, although I always struggle. I said yesterday that November here is the month of fireworks, but it is not quite true: it truly is the month of the poppy. They are everywhere: in shops, in the street where they are sold by army cadets or veterans and of course on the everybody's coat or shirt. For a while at least, because I am not the only one struggling to keep the poppy on, apparently. Back in 2008, I blogged about In Flanders Fields, the poem by John McCrae which inspired the tradition of paper poppies. Today, I have decided to share a short documentary video made by The Royal British Legion telling the story of the tradition. Since I cannot keep a poppy on due to a hand full of thumbs, I can at least do this much to commemorate and remember.

Paper Poppy

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep,
though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

In Flanders Fields, by John McCrae

It is Remembrance Sunday today. I have never been very aware of it. That is, until I started dating my wife. Now, on her initiative, I buy a paper poppy which is sold everywhere in England. Before that, all I knew about the poppy flower and John McCrae's poem was the dreadful History by the Minute episode that was so ridiculously solemn and laughably patriotic, to the point of being obscene (like most of the episodes of this propaganda program). Now I have friends in the army, so I am more sensitive/sensible to the work and sacrifice of the people in the army. I now like the simplicity of the poppy, like a drop of blood on a grey November day, beautiful in its mourning sadness.