Dunoon remembers

The poppies knitted by a good-sized number of Dunoon knitters - according to the Dunoon Observer, they were all "ladies" - adorn the railings at the foot of Ferry Brae, as they do the tops of various ornamental iron bits and pieces all along Argyll Street. It struck me that although there were many of them, they looked somehow sparse - I'd have been tempted, I think, to group the whole lot on this one railing, to make more of a splash, but maybe that's just vulgar showmanship on my part.

And I was strangely irritated by the reference to the "ladies" who knitted them. The paper is no longer produced by the original owners, but by golly some traditions die hard. I'd prefer to have read that they were in fact produced by people - men, women, children - but I fear that the men of Dunoon do not yet knit -  or perhaps that would be too radical an idea for the Observer. Failing that, what's wrong with the word "women"? I know one person who could, if she so desired (she doesn't) designate herself a Lady. The rest of us are women.

Or, if you're an old Greenham Common type, wimmin ...