England play Germany this evening at Wembley and it sounds like the football will be incidental to the virtue signalling. Not only will the two teams be sporting poppy armbands but there will be poppies on sale, poppy T-shirts given away, poppy wreaths laid, poppy banners paraded and then, during the minute’s silence before kick-off, the Wembley arch will glow red as ‘Football Remembers’ flashes up on the big screen.
As if football could forget. As if any of us could forget. Not in this day and age when the poppy is so ubiquitous at this time of year. Once upon a time, when history was still a serious subject in schools and kids had a grandparent or two to tell them a war story, we honoured our warriors with a plain old paper poppy. How quaint and uncommercial.
In 2017, we can show our gratitude with poppy brooches, coasters, tea towels, pen-pots, ear-rings, umbrellas, baseball caps, scarves, friendship bracelets, zip pullers, jigsaws, golf balls, keyrings and fold-away shopping bags.
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