R is for Remembrance

Those who've stuck with the Blog from the start will know there have been one or two false starts with other Blogs, one of which is still lying there dead, another was Other Collectables, a blog which was imported and subsumed by this one after about a year and a half, and 20-odd posts, to which I haven't added much since, although the idea is to have other collectables from time to time, and of which this could be seen as an addition.

A collection by default, and I'm sure many households in the UK (and Canada?) have this box, tub, tin or drawer somewhere on the premises? For those who don't know about 'Poppy Day', here in the UK, and Canada I believe, we commemorate our war dead, by wearing the Haig Fund poppies for a week or two leading-up to the nearest Sunday to the 11th Hour of the 11th of November.

 

Services of remembrance are held in most churches and/or at most war memorials, on the Sunday, for those who wish to join in, while more personal tributes can be undertaken in relative privacy away from (before or after) the organised activities, and small crosses can be left, wreaths &etc., which remain up until the end of November in some cases, while two-minutes silences are held nationwide at 11 a.m. on the 11th (of the 11th Month, the time and day the armistice came into effect, at the close of the First World War), whether before or after the Sunday.

 

These are the poppies we wear, they represent the poppies which thrived on the war-broken ground of Flanders fields and the mud of no-mans-land, as they always do on construction sites and spoil-heaps, to this day.

 

But having made your contribution, and worn your poppy, two things become pressing upon its disposal, one, you must have the morality to buy a new one next year, not reuse your old one, and two, there seems something disrespectful in throwing away something which represents our own dead ancestors - so in the box, tub, tin or drawer they go!

 

This enables the above picture, which shows the evolution of the Remembrance Poppy in my lifetime, with a heavy, felted-card one on the left, a bit like blotting-paper, but it didn't immediately disintegrate when it got wet (which was quite common back then), it comes with a long-stalked and quite thick 'stem'.

 

Then four sub-versions of the current one, the flower now in impressed cartridge-paper, first with a shorter, thinner stalk, then the addition of a piece of foliage, thirdly, a side-branch/catch was added to help keep it in the button-hole, and finally the side-branch then got remanufactured in heavier plastic as they had a tendency to pull-off

 

Alongside the final version is the all paper one which has been gaining usage in the last few years, and will probably become the norm, as we try to phase unnecessary plastics out of common use.

 

Top right I have doubled-up an old sun-faded pink one, something we used to do with the old ones when we were kids, you could get two or three under the button before it started threatening to pop-off, which this was, as I shot it, I think the two pieces of foliage were one too many!

The four stalks, oldest on the left, current on the right, the message in the centre of the button changed from Haig Fund to Poppy Appeal sometime in the 1990's I think, and the whole exercise is to raise money for the British (or Canadian) Legion, a charity which supports ex-servicemen, and provides social venues open to the whole community, but specifically aimed at ex-servicemen.

The oldest and newest on the left, with two versions of the all-paper one on the right, a selection is provided at each collection stand/table (often manned by ex-servicemen or their widows), and here we have one with a sticky patch and the other to be pinned-through with the dress-makers pins provided.

Other poppies exist, I have a huge eight or ten-inch lump of polyethylene vehicle-badge somewhere, which were common for a while around the turn of the century, attached to the radiator with a cable-tie (mine was on my Cittrowaan, a BX19 GTI RocketShip!), and they are still available I think, but the famous 'reserve' of the British has rather rendered them a bit naff and/or show-off'y, and due to their cost, people assume the owners are reusing them every year - shock horror! Also, the changing design ethic of motor-vehicles means more and more of them have nowhere to locate the poppy!

They were originally silk, and hand-made by disabled veterans, and there must have been other designs over the decades between 1919'ish and the 1970's when my felted big-boy was made and procured, probably compulsorily at school! But if you chose to collect them, I'm sure you could have years of fun tracking them all down?

 

A lot of the officers wives' used to have jewelled-silver broaches from Garrards, but they knew to wear them on their dress or blouse and make sure they had a fresh Haig on their coat or jacket, and you can get the enamelled 'pins' from the sellers every year, if you are a pin-head - what pin-badge collectors call themselves!

We'll be at the Sandown Park toy fair today, and at 11 a.m., there will be two minutes silence, wherever you are, please remember them, because they died for a better world, not the intolerant fascist one Rishi and Cruella are trying to create. Not the illiterately idiotic one Truss nearly foisted on us, and not the murderously immature one, Boris and eye-test-man ran for nearly two years, but then . . . none of them have served five minutes in the forces, yet they've all gone down to Lullworth, Warminster or somewhere, to drive a tank!