Memories

Remembrance Day. And observing the silence, as Big Ben struck eleven o’clock, whilst looking at the poppy display on TV, I shed my usual tears. My iPad has been awash with poppies and the words written a hundred years ago – although no less potent or poignant for that – by the Trench Poets……..

They shall not grow old as we who are left grow old. At the going down of the sun and in the morning, we shall remember them.

For your tomorrow, we gave our today.

If I should die, think only this of me. There is a corner of some foreign field that is forever England.

My friend you would not tell with such high zest, to children, desperate for some ardent glory, the old lie: Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori.

My thoughts have been with my thrice-wounded grandad, Albert Spires. He spent three days, lying wounded in No-Man’s Land. They patched him up and sent him back and then he was gassed. And his son, my own dad, Ron Spires, a 17-year-old merchant seaman during WWII on the North Atlantic convoys. And with my lovely friend Martine Doolan, who was so cruelly taken from us this year and whose birthday it is today.

And then Andre Rieu was on Loose Women. My lovely, late mum’s absolute favourite. And so the tears are flowing again.

A true Day of Remembrance.