Tuesday 9 December 2014

The Tower - Remembrance day

After what seemed like a crescendo of World War 1 remembrance leading up to November 11th, and my work commitments, the two came together on the 13th November. I was given a days holiday, and following a conversation with the wife, the car was duly headed up to London to see the Poppy display at the Tower. The display was going to go round the country in reduced size, but was being kept at the Tower till the end of the month. If we wanted to see it, now was the time.


There was a plaque next to the main entrance which said that there were 888,246 poppies on display, in the moat, and coming out of the wall embrasures. These were for each of the number of Commonwealth soldiers who died during the war.


The sight of the poppies was just too overwhelming to be honest. How could each poppy be a person, and should there be more, how did they get that many into the display, what about the wounded, the Germans, Italians, Turks, French, Russians.


The display raises more questions than it answers, each poppy individually crafted, and actually quite big in size. I wanted to write a post to signify my 100th post, going over 10,000 hits and try to step back a bit to get perspective. I wanted to try and think about the poppies significance.


What struck me was their closeness all together, individual yet joined together in some kind of open weaved mattress, lifting, rolling and pouring out of the walls in a fountain of flat cherry blood red.


Each poppy a name, each an individual, washing around and through the Bloody Tower.