So much given by so many...

[Rapatwork]

This time of year is always somewhat emotional for me.

I used to be in a marching band, and as some of the few bugle players around, we were called upon to perform at Remembrance Sunday (second Sunday in November) ceremonies. It's akin to Veteran's Day in the US, but we have the main ceremonies on the Sunday in question and a two-minute silence at eleven am on the eleventh of November.

I was fairly young when I started doing this - perhaps twelve or thirteen. We stood at windy cenotaphs in the middle of nowhere as old men and women came with their families to remember friends and families.

After a couple of years, I got to know the expressions. There was sorrow, and you could see people looking back into the past at other times. I didn't remember the faces, but I remembered the expressions on them.

What really stuck in my mind were the gaps. Every year, there would be more gaps.

I left the band many moons ago (well, it folded due to lack of interest from the electronic generation), but I still remember the gaps. A few years ago - I think this was November of 2003 - I was remembering the gaps and performing the silence as decency required.

It wasn't long after this that a lady of mature appearance came to browse through the stock on our external display. She had the sort of face I had seen around the cenotaphs. She was of an age that made me think of people keeping a stiff upper lip when the V2s were dropping during the Blitz.

She came in. "I was going to buy some of your pre-packed spinach," she said, "but it's not ready washed. It's just so hard to wash, isn't it?"

With that, she left.

So much, given by so many, for so few...

Rapscallion

[Barefootgirl]

Nobody ever said that being part of the Few conferred intelligence or common sense on people who never had those attributes to start with. More than likely Mrs Spinach-Washing-is-Hard was moaning in the same way in 1941 as well because a doodlebug wiped out the breadshop.

Its a shame about the band. Most of the churches where I live now and where I grew up had buglers from the ATC or the Army cadets, there are always decent kids who can play from there.

When I was very, very little, I was taken to the Cenotaph in London and watched with thousands of other silent people as a man who'd fought in the Boer War marched past. In those days, there were plenty of WW1 veterans as well.