Last week in the shop where I picked up my newspaper I noticed on the counter a collection box for the Poppy Fund. That was nearly a month before Remembrance Day though.

This is the second year in a row where I have seen poppies available to the public before I saw any on the television, but I have since seen one sported  by a member of the public in a TV audience.

Thankfully the politicians have not yet got into the act.

Harrogate is a town in West Yorkshire. We visited it in Novemeber 2022. Its War Memorial is a huge tapering stone obelisk on a square base in the monumenatl municipal style. It lies by the main A 61 road through the town.

Dedication. “Our Glorious Dead, 1914-1918, 1939-1945”:-

Side views:-

Frieze of bugler:-

Frieze of Victory:-

Great War Names:-

Names for both World Wars:-

Poppy Crosses by Harrogate War Memorial:-

VC Recipients Plaque, below Harrogate War Memorial:-

Poppies for Remembrance, outside Betty’s Tea Rooms, Harrogate:-

Mirabile dictu!

My first sighting of a poppy being worn this year was on a member of the public when I went to pick up my paper this morning.

I had, though, seen them on sale in that same shop late last week.

I suppose those in Westminster have had other things on their minds this year to bother with the usual unseemly rush to sport a poppy.

But no doubt they’ll be all over the TV soon.

I saw my first remembrance poppies of the year yesterday.* Amazingly they were being worn by MSPs at First Minister’s Questions. (Mind you I hadn’t watched footage of the Westminster Parliament this week.)

That’s still a bit early. October 28^th. It’s not even Halloween yet.

And Remembrance Sunday is about as late as it can be this year being on November 14^th so yesterday was a full 19 days before the commemoration ceremonies.

At least the TV broadcasters weren’t sporting them yet.

*Today there were some at the till of shop I was in, so the public now has its chance to contribute to the poppy fund.

We quite often go into Dunfermline.

Late last October the town (Sorry, it’s a city now) was festooned with poppies in the run-up to Remembrance Day.

Carnegie Library, Abbot Street:-

Lower High Street:-

Carnegie Drive:-

On main roundabout

Appin Crescent:-

None of the last tfour photographs was taken by the driver!

For my previous posts on this topic see here. (I suppose this post will also appear there now.)

Well. This year’s award as virtue signalling, sanctimonious tosser goes to Andrew Rosindell MP who posted the below on Twitter. Before poppies were even on sale to the public.

Proud to be first to wear a poppy in the House of Commons this year?

I wasn’t aware it was a competition.

(I also suspect he might be wearing last year’s.)

As for his colleague Anthony Brown:-

A normal poppy’s not good enough for you, then? You obviously feel you have to shove it in our faces.

Methinks the lady doth protest too much.

Grasmere is a village in the Lake District of Cumbria, England, lying beside the lake of the same name.

It is famous as the home of the poet William Wordsworth and his sister Dorothy at Dove Cottage:-

Dove Cottage was later also home to Thomas De Quincey, author of Confessions of an English Opium-Eater.

Side view:-

Side of house and garden:-

Part of back garden:-

Wordsworth’s bedroom:-

Sitting room of Dove Cottage:-

Back room:-

The graves of the Wordsworths are in the local cemetery:-

For the Great War Armistice anniversary some of the local lampposts were adorned with large poppies commemorating lads from the local school killed in the Great War.

Hero Oswald Hillerns:-

Henry Bowness Johnson:-

It was one month and one day before Armistice Day this year (ie on October 10^th) when I saw my first paper poppies beside a shop’s till. If you were to wear them for all that time they would have surely have deteriorated beyond use.

On Friday 20^th Oct I saw one in the wild (as it were.) A young girl at the entrance to Kirkcaldy Library had just “dropped her flower.” She didn’t seem to know what it represented.

At least the politicians haven’t – quite – got round to it yet. Unless I’ve missed them.

My first sighting on TV this year was on Saturday night (21^st Oct) and it was sported by an Italian! That is just bizarre. OK they were our allies in the Great War but in (most of) World War 2 we were enemies – even if their soldiers’ hearts weren’t really in it. (The Italian in question was Chelsea’s manager Antonio Conte. This just goes to show the unpleasant overtones of coercion associated with poppy wearing by public figures these days.)

Tonight came the first “normal” TV appearance – on the BBC’s Countryfile. Three weeks before Remembrance Day. And how long before it was the piece filmed?

I will make my contribution to the Earl Haig Fund as usual this year but reserve my right not to wear the poppy. I’ll say it again. The servicemen it commemorates died for my right not to be forced to wear one.

Yesterday I had to travel about Fife and the Edinburgh area.

In St Andrews I spotted British Legion poppies (the small ones made of metal; presumably manufactured for those who think that the normal paper ones do not sufficiently show off their “patriotism” or generosity – but I call it their ostentation) at a checkout in the “M&S Food” there.

Later in a supermarket in North Queensferry, on the way home from a dinner at my eldest son’s, just inside the door was a stack of tins (well, nowadays they’re “plastics”) of Roses, Quality Street, Celebrations and Heroes.

Christmas has long since started in August – that was always when annuals were published – but Remembrance Day? They’re still beating the drums at the Edinburgh Tattoo for goodness’s sake.

First spotting of the season, BBC Scotland News on Friday 18/10/13. Just shy of one week less than a month before Armistice Day.

At the SNP Conference, Alex Salmond addressing the devotees – complete with poppy.

The next news item featured a farmer or something (he was in the great outdoors, whatever) who sported a poppy in his lapel. I wonder if the BBC supplied it to him.

Curiously the presenters in the studio were sans poppies. Give it time.