Poppy and Remembrance

My efforts to indulge in a little light cat-blogging – what you need is a picture – reminded me again that I need to get myself beyond basic functions in this blog programme. I’m like a person who has learnt to drive but put off dealing with reversing for a while. This programme is all very non-intuitive – or so I grumbled to Kelvin, my mentor. But I have now found the instructions – they aren’t called that, of course – and I am reading the words with great interest but not understanding them. Watch this space.
Poppy is so named because she came to us on Remembrance Sunday. She recently had her portrait painted – it’s Exhibit No 126 ‘Poppy the Bishop’s Cat’ in the Annual Exhibition of the Perthshire Art Association – £250!

I wore my poppy today – following my usual practice of wearing it Remembrance Sunday only. I think this is a hangover from the highly politicised nature of poppy-wearing in Northern Ireland. It’s different here – although I read my fellow-cyclist Jon Snow’s complaint about ‘poppy fascism’ with interest.

Meanwhile, we had the simplest possible Act of Remembrance in church today. As always, I find the silence almost unbearably moving – as was the sight of the small and faithful gathering around the War Memorial in the centre of Blairgowrie yesterday morning. No room to be picky or PC. Particularly not while soldiers are dying for a [lost?] cause in Iraq. Re-read Sebastian Faulks’ ‘Birdsong’ – still, for me, the outstanding evocation of the First World War – or Ben Elton’s ‘The First Casualty’ or Pat Barker’s trilogy.