The poppy seller
Arthur is in pole position outside the mother ship aka Peter Jones. He has a glittering array of poppy adornments, from traditional paper and pin (lost within the day so moral obligation to buy another, very profitable for the British Legion) to enamel stick pins to luminous clip tags. His favourite customer is Lady Camilla, who buys two for her Pekingeses, Violet and Daisy, and hangs them off their collars – so smart in the park. Arthur holds them (Daisy sits on his lap, Violet just looks beautiful, sales boom) while she goes to buy him a cup of tea. Everything is so ghastly – Brexit, the election, Boris, Corbyn, Mr Garage, climate change, vegans – that it is a good deed in a naughty world that Peter Jones allows dogs again now.
Arthur was a colour sergeant in the 13th/18th Royal Hussars. He never quite got the hang of making himself indispensable to field officers, but who likes a boot licker? The Peter Jones matrons think he is a darling relic from the Second World War, so sweet in his red coat that they’d love to take him home and sit him in the corner of the drawing room like an art installation for Remembrance, but actually Arthur, now in his 70s, first saw active service in Aden. Flies, panic, heat and dust. He got his second stripe in
Ireland, by which time he had trained the youngsters to run errands to the Naafi for his smokes.
He uses the same brisk imperative with Chelsea’s German and Japanese tourists: “What eez this red flower for?” Arthur replies: “It is for our veteran soldiers,” restraining himself from adding any further remark, as one has to be so careful these days. Why? His father was on the Burma Road and used to wake up in their semi in Sheffield screaming in the night. “A buttonhole does you no harm,” is his measured response.
He is rather a whizz with the card machine thingy – the disappearance of cash is another annoyance of modern life, but one has to keep up – and is thrilled with his iPad, a present from his children, so he can now communicate with the grandchildren and order books from Amazon. His mobile is a total joy. We will remember them, but with modern technology his family remembers him.
Victoria Mather
There’ll Always be an England: Social Stereotypes from The Daily Telegraph by Victoria Mather and Sue Macartney-Snape (Constable, £12.99). Follow on Facebook/ Instagram: @social_stereotypes