Remembering

I have seen so many images of this posted online and thought that my health was going to deny me the opportunity to see it for myself. However, we decided that we would try a trip into London today as the kids are off school and we could keep it simple as far as trips go.

We headed into London late morning and headed straight to Tower Hill. It was ridiculously busy when we got out of the station, so we decided to get lunch before heading over to the Tower of London. On the way to find lunch, we literally bumped into Mrs W’s cousins who, it transpires, works nearby. What a coincidence, eh?

Lunch purchased, we found a green spot across the road from the destination and ate our sandwiches and took in the typical London cacophony of vehicle horns being sounded by drivers congratulating each other on fine displays of driving (or something like that), endless police sirens and a police helicopter overhead. I can’t believe that just over a year ago, this was normal for my daytime listening and how quickly I have grown unaccustomed to it.

Having teased ourselves a bit, we headed across to the Tower of London to view the fantastic Blood Swept Lands and Seas of Red, a progressively growing display of 888,246 ceramic poppies filling the Tower’s moat. It is an impressive display and I’m glad we made the effort as it would have been a terrible shame to miss it. I just wish the throngs of other people hadn’t had the same idea on the same day.

Having seen the display, we headed across the road to the Merchant Navy War Memorial on Tower Hill to show the children the name of their Great Uncle George on the plaque for the Empire Heritage that was sunk by a German U-boat off the coast of Northern Ireland in September 1944. He was only 17 at the time and my gran never really came to terms with his loss: having never had the opportunity to lay him to rest, she seemed to hold out the hope that he would walk through the door at any time. In her later years, through her confusion, she would tell me that one of the more famous of the newsreaders was my Uncle George.