I watched a couple of teenagers asking questions and trying to be facetious to a man selling poppies.

“What’s the use of a plastic flower?” they asked.

”It’s to remind us of all those that gave their lives in the war,” he replied.

“So how’s a plastic flower going to do that?”

“The poppy is a symbol. The red is the blood they shed and the flower for how fragile life is.”

“And the plastic for what a crappy idea it is’ one of the boys said.

“Some of them were younger than you. They went to war believing that they would fight for their country and come back, but they drowned in ditches, covered in mud or got shot as they ran towards the enemy. They couldn’t back out; those that did were shot as deserters.”

“Well it was a long time ago mate. Move on,” one boy said. But the other put fifty pence in and took a poppy.

”You’re not going to wear a flower? ‘the other asked incredulously.

“Why not? It’s not much to ask really,” the other one replied and put it in his buttonhole.

The poppy seller looked as though he could kiss him while the other boy sighed, shook his head but then put ten pence in the tin.

‘I don’t want one’ he said gruffly when the man offered a poppy.

“Thank you,” the seller said.

“No, it’s thank them really,” the boy said. “But I’m still not wearing a bloody flower.”