Poppies

Opinions are like arseholes, everyone's got one. Whereas in the past these arseholes didn't have a medium through which to express themselves nowadays they have cheap and easy access to the internet and social media in particular.

Maybe I'm becoming less inclined to entertain bullshit the older I get but it seems to me that whenever you log on to Facebook or Twitter for a bit of lighthearted relief you find that where there used to be videos of monkeys falling out of trees after smelling their own shite, someone has shared a Britain First post. It's all become a bit tiresome* so thank goodness for blog writers, am I right?

The big debate as we approach Armistice Day is poppies. Why we should wear them and those who choose not to wear them justifying their reasons. National treasure (I.E. Used to be on the telly but no-one gives a fuck about you anymore) Barbara Windsor thinks you can "sod off" if you don't wear one. And now that that's been cleared up we can carry on with our lives.

Except it hasn't been cleared up. All it does it create unnecessary division between people and forgive me for saying but, isn't that how wars start and lives are lost?

I don't wear one and I haven't worn one for some time but that was more to do with the fear of stabbing myself in the finger or chest than any ideological point of view I might have. I did have a small and simple poppy that I'd donated some money to the salvation army for and had left sitting in my car as an almost permanent reminder but it had started to curl at the edges quite significantly, so when the car went in for its M.O.T. I binned it (the poppy, not the car). Shame on me, eh?

I reckon my abandoned poppy is probably doing fine though because everywhere you look these days poppies are bigger, brighter and more elaborate than ever. That didn't happen by accident, so poppies have obviously become self aware and created a support network that'll show an abandoned poppy how to iron out its curls and find a new car to sit in. It might even have advice on how a poppy can become one of those enormous poppies that are so big that they dominate the fronts of cars and vans, so much so you'd be forgiven for thinking it was a Comic Relief Red Nose and that they feed on exhaust emissions. Curiously, they do seem to be bigger on Volkswagens.

It seems to me nowadays it's not enough to show your respect, you have to be seen to be showing your respect and what better way to do than with a poppy so large and deep and round that if you lay on your back in the mountains of Puerto Rico and pointed it at the sky, it could double up as a radio telescope and scour the universe in the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI). Yes, lady in Costa coffee this afternoon, in the highly unlikely event you're reading this I'm talking about you.

Wear one or don't wear one. It needs no more discussion than that really.

*I say this fully aware that during the referendum campaign I saturated Facebook and Twitter with pro-independence articles and opinions and I was a tiresome bore also.