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| What am I thinking - a poppy wristband |
I get annoyed because people wear their poppies too early (it should just be the week before Remembrance Sunday in my view), I get annoyed at the television presenters and politicians who clearly get a dictat from on high saying “everyone must wear a poppy from 9am on October 21st” - it has all got a little too corporate. Wearing a poppy is a tribute to those killed, an act of remembrance and a statement that such horror shouldn’t happen again. It’s a personal thing, not a corporate statement.
I get annoyed at celebrities who wear glittery poppies (it’s not supposed to be jewellery) and I also got annoyed because this year’s campaign seems excessively aggressive, somewhat against the whole ethos of wearing a poppy. At times it almost seemed the equivalent of giving a white feather to able-bodied males who were not fighting in the First World War. Poppy sellers at King’s Cross on Friday were shouting: “Get your poppy here. You’ll look ‘sad’ without one in London this weekend.” I felt judged when I walked past a poppy seller without wearing one and I also felt the Royal British Legion has wasted money on poster campaigns - they were all over the tube and must have cost a shed-load of cash. Do I want to give this organisation a tenner to waste on PR and posters?
Also, I feel that there’s a real pressure to buy this year and chavs have taken over poppy day with a “support our boys” type of attitude. Recent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have created a relatively small number of disabled and extremely disaffected people who are very ‘in your face’ about their plight. My school friend Peter Roberts had a grandfather, who volunteered to fight in the First World War and was blinded by shell fragments in Mesopotamia. He spent pretty much the rest of his life in the front room of his house next-door-but-one to us in Lostock Gralam. Now I’m not saying that’s a good thing, but it’s probably preferable to standing at Victoria underground station shoving a poppy under my nose and rattling a Help for Heroes bucket. I used to feel that Poppy Day was an act of remembrance, but also a statement that war was dreadful, abhorrent and shouldn’t be allowed to happen again. Now we’ve been (and are) embroiled in fighting unwinnable, interventionist wars in Iraq and Afghanistan in support of dubious USA foreign policy. I don’t feel we’ve learned our lessons. The people disabled and hurt by roadside bombs who are demanding recognition, gratitude and financial support are the same people who were killing local civilians with misdirected bullets and bombs. Tony Blair has a lot to answer for.
Well, Friday came and I still hadn’t bought a poppy and on Saturday morning I was explaining my reasons (see above) to Margaret on the way to do the shopping at Whittlesey. When we got there, Whittlesey was invaded by poppy sellers, there was literally one at every street corner - a much higher presence than other years. This should have hardened my resolve against the over-commercialisation of Remembrance Sunday, but perversely, it didn’t. I went completely out of character and not only gave them a tenner, but got myself a poppy wristband! This from the man who has taken the leaf off his poppy in years gone by because it detracts from the pure, symbolic simplicity of the poppy flower as a poignant emblem of remembrance.. I might make the excuse that I was wearing a cagoule with no buttonhole and not a garment you’d want to piece with a pin, but it still doesn’t fully explain this irrational behaviour.
On Saturday afternoon, the morning rain had gone and the sun was out so I took the dogs for a walk across the fen. When we dropped down from the village boundary onto the flat fen, I could see three people at the other side of the big field some 300 yards away. They had a dog and I thought it was perhaps Michael Sly doing a round of his crops or perhaps some people pigeon shooting.
As I came into view they moved off, keeping as far away from me as possible. I didn’t think anything of it except perhaps that they didn’t want to get my dogs involved with theirs. I could see they had a dog, but couldn’t see what sort. I walked out along the footpath and then back again by the same route. Coming back, I could see some people in the distance walking towards me and I thought it was this group completing their inspection. It turned out to be Janet and Andrew out for an afternoon walk and they asked me if I’d seen the hare-coursers. They had bumped into them along the hedge marking the start of the fen and they’d scuttled off pretty quickly.
Hare-coursing, a favourite pastime of travellers, especially the Irish ones, is now illegal as it falls under the act banning the hunting of mammals with dogs. I think the Labour government saw it as stopping the toffs hunting foxes, but it’s also stopped gipsies catching hares, except it hasn’t. We saw Janet and Andrew at Bellowhead that night and they said there had been a police car and a van on Sandpit Road as they’d walked back into the village. I’d never thought that the people I saw might be hare-coursing and it wouldn’t have occurred to me to call the police if I had. It was funny seeing Janet and Andrew on the walk, I’d been describing the route to him on Thursday night, so they must have decided to give it a try. I didn’t see any sign of the illegal hare-coursers on the way back, but there were some people in a boat on Medicine Pond. They were fishing out dead carp. There have been a few found floating on the surface and they were taking those out in case they caused a problem for the remaining fish. Medicine Pond may have been a fish farm from hundreds of years ago when Thorney was the site of a large abbey and the monks would have farmed fish as a food source.
There’s no clue as to what’s killing the fish, but there is a covering of green weed on the pond surface. It goes right across and I’ve never seen it like that before. It could be that the fish dying means they haven’t been around to eat the weed or it could be that the weed is starving the fish of oxygen. The dead fish were quite large, well over a foot in length.
In the evening we were going to watch Bellowhead at the Corn Exchange in Cambridge with Janet, Andrew, Laura and her new fiance Chris Crane. Their wedding is set for 2014. Laura and Chris met at school and he was in the same year as Sam and would have played rugby with him.
Andrew was very keen to be there early and so we set off at just after 5pm for an 8pm start and were queuing outside at around 6pm. Everyone was very excited, especially Margaret, who famously grabbed Jon Boden the lead singer at Beverley Folk Festival because she “just wanted to tell him how much she enjoyed his performance.” Jon Boden was saying “Thank you, I’m just trying to find my children” while Margaret had a firm grip on his arm and had to be prised away. Very embarrassing for us, but Margaret doesn’t have any recollection of it.
Anyway, we were among the first dozen people into the concert hall and managed to bag a place right at the front against the crush barriers. The sound wasn’t as well mixed as it would have been further back, but the view was excellent. It soon filled up and we had to wait until 8pm for the warm-up act to start and 9pm before Bellowhead came on. The warm-up act was a French trio - guitar, squeezebox and drums - playing Cajun music and they were pretty good.
Bellowhead got an enthusiastic response. I really like them, but I do find their live performances a little loud and frantic. It’s almost as if each instrument is trying to play louder than the others and I long for a little light and shade, a couple of softer songs to punctuate the full-on stuff. Having said that, they are wonderful entertainment and have re-introduced a folk rock sound that’s reminiscent of the Albion Band, but with their own stamp. It’s animated and good fun, so we had an excellent time and they played all the favourites (except Amsterdam) and most of their new album - Broadside.
The Corn Exchange is a good venue and there’s a big multi-storey nearby, so it’s easy to get to, although Cambridge traffic leaves a lot to be desired - as does my sat-nav which wanted to send me down a taxis-and-buses only lane! Andrew was a few cars behind us coming out, but clearly Laura had a better knowledge of Cambridge streets than my sat-nav (she did live there for a couple of years) because, although they started behind us, they ended up in front and we caught them up just outside Peterborough.
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