LONDON – In the run-up to Remembrance Day, on November 11, the average Briton spends one pound on a poppy (the estimated market value by any right-minded individual). However this year, against the very spirit of the day, the durability and build of these flowers of remembrance have come under scrutiny from a witless middle-class attack against the poppies producer’s, the British Legion.

In these times of economic hardship, one man Cultsha spoke with informed us that he had spent as much as six pounds on poppies over the last two weeks. Owing to the fact that poppy after poppy wilted in the pin hole of his jacket, Simon Spencer, a city worker commented that he felt weighed down with a moral burden to be wearing a poppy, so went out and bought another on each occasion. “I’ve bought so many this year, the local British Legionnaire selling them at the railway station even knows me by name,” he commented.

Even with a fresh poppy in his button hole, Spencer’s trauma surrounding this fake-flowered holiday didn’t end there. A modern day brave soldier in a functional urban battlefield, he relayed to us the trauma of being accosted by aging do-gooders and ASBO-tagged teens just looking to join in with a little anti-social behaviour alike, for even daring  to wear his poppy underneath his winter time overcoat. “It’s ridiculous. Are we expected to walk around in poppy-clad shirts at this chilly time of the year. I’m not a fucking Geordie; I can actually feel the cold.”

Needless vigilantante  issues aside, in the true spirit of Remembrance Day, Britons nationwide took two minutes out of out their shamelessly self-involved lives yesterday, to honour those who died fighting for the freedom we presently forget to appreciate, or enjoy. Tradition stipulates that upon this day a poppy is worn to commemorate the bravery of our fallen heroes, with the proceeds going to the families of the bereaved. The poppy is believed to have been chosen for its symbolic role on this commemorative day, due to its distinct colourings. The red leaf of the flower symbolises the embarrassed look upon the faces of those not wearing a poppy, when questioned by a crying grandmother about why they are not donning one. The green branch represents the envy of right-wing-minded folk worldwide, who are still left wondering what could have been. And the black centre not only holds the flower together, but also symbolises the vacuum of guilt which one must assume for not having thought about the many who perished on any other day of the year.

Although Mr Spencer’s anger is rather misplaced, one must admire his own bravery to speak his mind given the emotionally-charged context. To be sure, if you’re living in Britain and not wearing a poppy at this time of year, the wrath you will incur from bystanders can surely only be matched by the backlash experienced by those sporting the Star of David on their arm in 1930s Germany.

As it turns out, Spencer is not alone in his anguish. In an unnamed Sunday newspaper an equally clandestine reader, by the name of ‘Annoyed of Tunbridge Wells’, wrote in a letter to the editor, ‘I don’t understand why they, the British Legion, refuses to make the poppies they sell more durable. I want a poppy that I can wear with pride year-after-year, and keep on the mantelpiece at home for the other eleven-and-a-half months when they are considered surplus to requirements.’

However, for the vast majority of us, alike the few solitary Pimms-drinking summer days which we fondly savour the memory of each year, ‘at the going down of the sun, we shall remember them; lest we not forget’.