Lest We Forget

I've been planning this post for sometime and all of a sudden it's here and I'm not nearly as prepared as I intended. However it must be done.

Over the last couple of weeks poppies have been appearing all over the place, on billboards, scaffolding and most notably that incredible display at the Tower Of London, which I got a breif glimpse of yesterday while passing on my Megabus coach to Norwich.

However First have excelled themselves. Poppies have been appearing on buses and I think that was a quite fantastic gesture. I first noticed one in Ipswich depot a couple of weeks ago on the newly repainted 32655 and it looked like this.

The original poppy on 32655

Now that didn't look quite right but I didn't know why, so I went home, did my research, and discovered that the leaf was pointing in the wrong direction. According to the Royal British Legion the leaf should point to 11 o'clock to signify the significance of the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month. Ladies can wear the poppy with the leaf pointing to 1 o'clock as that is more symetrical with necklines on dresses etc.

Now one of the improvements I've noticed with First since Chris Speed started to make changes is First now listen to people when errors/faults etc are brought up. I emailed Barry at Ipswich depot telling him the poppies were incorrectly positioned and within a day it had been amended, and all others I have seen since have been correct. Well done Ipswich - again!

32655 with the repositioned poppy.

So here are a few pics of how the depots around the region have been displaying the poppies.

A Norwich Network President in Castle Meadow

First Essex's 66976 at Colchester with poppy set further back

Lowestoft Gemini 37568 at Norwich Bus Station

Unfortunately I didn't see any Yarmouth vehicles with poppies. I assume they had them I just didn't see any. So we finish with what I regard as poppy perfection. Kings Lynn found the perfect place on their X1 E400's.

However we shouldn't forget why those poppies are there. Many thousands of transport workers lost their lives in the two World Wars, and at the forefront were those woking at Caister Rd when it got attacked. Let us hope that not one more life is lost that way. May they all rest in peace, never be forgotten, and I leave you with the perfect poppy placement.

33817 at Norwich Bus Station with the perfect poppy

STOP PRESS

Grace, my loyal and dedicated Scottish Correspondent informs me that all Lothian Buses services pulled over at 11 o'clock to observe the two minute silence. Good for them and nice to hear about things like that.