Remembrance and respect should happen all year round

Not that it could easily have slipped the memory or failed to have nudged a need to pay attention. Remembrance weekend casts a distinctively contemplative mood everywhere.

It gives a quiet and necessary pause for thought, prayer or meditation - depending on your preferred method of trying to get things real for a change.

It is also, importantly, a time to help the Royal British Legion with its continuing efforts to support servicemen and women whose needs – when the rest of us are not remembering – can tend to be overlooked.

Which is why we wear our poppies “with pride” in November. We spare profound thoughts for those who have served and still serve selflessly in the interests of peace.

Then we move on to scrapping again, in the interests of anything but.

I suppose we should be grateful that, for a couple of days anyway, our leaders might lay wreaths, stop calling each other fascists and Stalinists and try to recall what those labels actually meant when their murderous cruelty and threats were at a zenith.

They might. But they’ll quickly forget again. You can put money on it.

Remembrance is for much more than a look back over two world wars.

We all know that – or should do by now. In essence it’s a brief opportunity to show respect and gratitude for all who undertake dangerous, life-risking public service for the wider benefit.

Seems like a narrow window though. Why aren’t they remembered in December or July? Why are they not publicly and instinctively respected gratefully all year round, rather than only on a century-old Armistice anniversary?

Beats me. A traditional mark on the modern autumn calendar, probably.

A scheduled squeezing in of some dutiful getting real, between trick or treating, hurling fireworks at emergency services and Christmas shopping, perhaps. Busy time of year, this.

Even if, for traditionalists, Remembrance Sunday is still all about two world wars, thanks and prayers for the fallen, there’s a puzzling question about where we are with it now.

Since we’ve evolved, sleepwalking, into a near binary country of hard right or hard left, many of us have been left stuck in the middle of neither-of-the-above.

It’s not that we don’t know what we want, more that we know what we don’t want... like those who served so well and paid dearly for it.

They fought and died for moderation, peace and freedom from unjustified, power-grabbing hatred. They are rightly hailed as heroes. Show belief in moderation now and you’re a “snowflake”. How weird is the march of time.

Ah well, sleepwalking is as sleepwalking does. We’re rather too far on with it now to wake up in a hurry to the errors of recently entrenched ways. But if we can’t give thought to the casualties of extremes at Remembrance time, when can we?

So, when church bells toll and wreaths are laid, maybe it’s worth more than a thought or two for what we’re supposed to learn – but haven’t really – from history.

It won’t take long. In no time at all, our momentarily respectful leaders and influencers will be getting back to their hate speech and name calling.

Not a lot we can do about any of that. Their words are their weapons and they’ll use them, whether we like it or not. Dirty fighting is their thing.

Me, I’m just thankful for the brief respite this weekend will bring from their calamitous clatter and for chance to ponder a while on the pride in a poppy.

Grateful to all people who put themselves at risk in committed public service, be that in military, emergency and policing services, volunteer rescuers and responders. And to the Royal British Legion, obviously, which remembers them all year. Every day, every year.

Proud too. Proud of why they all have done - and still do - any and all of it. What they stand for is immeasurable, priceless... and too easily forgotten.