Single Cheryl is on wrong track with her new single
Now she’s binned toyboy Liam Payne, Cheryl’s returning to what she does best.
No, not marrying twits or collecting surnames. She’s just released a new single, Love Made Me Do It.
It ffeatures such genius lines as: “Oh my God, Cheryl I’m such a sucker, I fall in love with every f*****.”
So Bob Dylan can rest easy on his Nobel prize.
Chez insists the track is not about her baby’s dad. Of course not.
Because then she’d be singing: “Oh my God, he’s just a wean, why did I get with Liam Payne?”
We’re not church-goers, ordinarily. Not even at Christmas. But both my boys are in the Scouts and are encouraged to attend along with their families and, on this one day of the year, we make the effort.
We’ve been for the past few years so I know the walls won’t fall down around us.
It’s not really about religion or faith. Frankly, I’d pray to anyone’s god if I thought it would bring lasting peace in this world and stop all war.
No, it’s just about showing respect. Quite a simple notion, really. I don’t feel obliged to go any more than I feel forced to wear a red poppy but I do feel a need to show respect.
We are not the type to write angry letters to TV companies if any presenter, newsreader, talk show guest or Strictly contestant appears on screen for a micro-moment without wearing a small red flower.
But I will pin poppies pies on to my children’s jackets today and that’s certainly nothing to do with the glorification of war, as former SNP justice minister Kenny MacAskill has cited d as his reason for refusing to wear a poppyoppy this year. year
He put his money in the collection box but didn’t take the flower. His choice but I think he got it wrong.
It’s that word “respect” again, for the millions who have died, dragged into wars that were not of their making, of the generations lost because they were treated as cannon fodder, the massed ranks of working-class soldiers sacrificed as expendable.
That’s what I teach my kids to remember, the horror not the “glory”, a red poppy for spilled blood.
Last year, the Scouts read out names and details of local people killed in World War I, young men cut down in their prime, all the promise of their lives extinguished, all the talent they might have brought us gone.
A century after their deaths, it still brought tears to the eyes.
This year, I’ll also be thinking about those modern-day service personnel so traumatised by their experiences that there now seems to be an epidemic of suicide among them.
In 2018, there’s been the equivalent of one death every six days, prompting Mental Health Minister Clare Haughey to launch a national crisis plan.
Those suffering from PTSD may have been executed during World War I. Today, some feel driven to take their own lives.
And there’s something terribly wrong if we remember those who died on Flanders Fields but leave to suffer those who survived more recent battles.
Green MSP Patrick Harvie chooses to wear a white poppy, a symbol of peace which he says is acknowledgement of victims of war worldwide, not just our own. He may have a point.
The Cooperative Women’s Guild who introduced white poppies in 191933 were taking a stance against war and violence and these were women who had already lost husbands, brothers andd sons in conflict. The bereaved are victims too.
Maybe next year, when this sensitive centenary has passed, it could be time to add a white poppy to our red ones as we attend Armistice Day services.
Red and white together: Remembrance and peace, acknowledgement of the past, hope for the future, respect for all.
Remembrance Day 2019 could find us in self-imposed isolation, no longer a member of the friendly union of European countries that has, in no small way, contributed to 73 years of peace.
We forget many things too quickly, if we allow it.