Poppies, poppies everywhere!!

My life recently has been very full of this certain red flower!

I been selling poppies in Sainsbury's foyer ever since the 31st - its switched between being very cold and wet in there to being tolerably warm when they finally put the heating on. We were selling 'ordinary' pin on poppies, stick on poppies, pin badge poppies, car stickers, rememberance crosses, car poppies, silk poppies and programmes for last night's Festival of Remeberance and Rededication at the White Rock Theatre.

So I took my MP3, my phone, food & drink and sweets and got to get lots of money in my collecting tins. My record was 1 £20, 3 £10s and 5 £5s and the tin only had half an inch left at the top. Another key occurance was the man who gave me an entire plastic bag of coppers!! That was very exciting indeedy.

The week before Mum and I delivered boxes of poppies with collecting tins to roughly fifty local businesses and today began the process of getting them all back again! When they're all in we'll need to return them to the Poppy Appeal Shop based in the town centre, to be counted.

A few days after that saw Mum and I manouvering through the town centre with two large hampers full of food. They are to be the grand prizes in the Poppy Appeal raffle (we don't take the cost of running the shop out of the donations, so the raffle covers the rent). We'd spent most of the previous day trying to artistically organise them - one Christmas and one less festive - and in the end added hay (donated free by a very supportive lady!)! If I do say so myself, they looked rather good!!
So yesterday was Rememberance Sunday.
In the morning my Mum and I were at Alexandra Park for the Rememberance service at the War Memorial. Mum marched with the veterans procession and I was in the crowd watching. It was a bit of a rainy and cold morning, but there was a good turn out and the Pipes and Drums were very impressive.
The parade was massive: the parade of Standard Bearers was lead by the Queen's Colour, followed by a parade of veterans -young and old, after them came the serving personnel from 47Regt Royal Artilery and the Princess of Wales' Royal Regt, all the different types of cadets, youth organisations etc. We also had representatives from Hastings' twin towns especially Oudenaarde in Belgium, whose representatives were all wearing garishly striped clothing and tricorned hats!!! :-)
The funny thing was that the heavy rain the night before had causd the lakes in the park to burst their banks and the paths the parade had to march down were 3ft at widest!!!!
There was hymn singing, prayers, wreath laying, an update on the renovation of the War Memorial and - of course - the Two Minutes Silence at 11am marked by cannon fire!


In the evening was the Festival of Rememberance and Rededication. We arrived just before 6pm to sell programmes (which you need to get in) and I was selling them right up until 7.15pm. I missed the first part - where each organisation goes up on stage whilst their particular song is played. They are preceeded by their Standard Bearer and they all then remain on stage for the rest of the evening. That part was followed by the entertainment!!
We had a performance by the Pipes and Drums *oh I do love pipe and drum music* and then the Singalong!!We sang Jerusalem, Run Rabbit Run, Sussex by the Sea and Land of Hope and Glory. Less frivolous singing was the National Anthem, Oh God our help in ages past, The Royal British Legion Hymn, I vow to thee my country and Abide with me.

So that's all that's happened and is yet to happen with regards to the Poppy Appeal save for Wednesday which those of you with a keen and penetrating mind will realise is actually the 11th November - Rememberance Day. We'll be having another service at the War Memorial with Two Minutes Silence and then head straight to the Poppy Appeal Shop for the drawing of the raffle - I am ever hopeful that I might win a nice prize!!

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That's all for now - as you can tell I'm rather frazzled by it all and so this may not make much sense, I don't know!! But that's what I've been up to for the last couple of weeks and will be until the end of this week!