What Kind of Poppy Wearer Are You?

Is there anything more resplendent, more English, than Wayne Rooney running onto the grass at Wembley, a memorial poppy ironed onto his shirt like a birthmark, like the gods came down themselves and prodded him with a single burning finger, in the middle of the chest, where the heart is, and whispered: remember?

(The answer here is “no”. Not a bulldog in a top hat drinking tea with the Queen. Not drizzle and street parties and hour-long arguments about the correct way to pronounce “scone”. If you want Englishness – if you want England – you want Wayne Rooney, roots of his hair flaying in a small amount of breeze, galloping onto the field at Wembley – the home of football! – with a large heat-transfer poppy marked in the middle of his £80 Nike kit. That, my friends, is England. That, my countrymen, is respect.)

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Sadly, those frauds at FIFA won’t allow Brave Wayne Rooney and his Brave Other English Teammates (don’t know the names) to properly show their respect, because they have decreed that in the Armistice Day showdown between England and Scotland neither side can bear a poppy on their football shirts. Instead, both football associations have vowed to DEFY this ban by very much adhering to the ban and instead wearing black armbands with poppies embroidered on them. Corruption reigns.

This has, of course, opened the annual debate on when and how much respect we must show by wearing a poppy. High Poppy Arbiter and dog sadness adjudicator Kay Burley tweeted six days ago to question journalist Kevin Maguire’s lack of a poppy in an appearance on Sky News. Soon the think-pieces tumbled in. What day must we start showing our respect? Does it inch back each year? Should we ever, really, stop wearing a poppy? Would it make more sense to get, all of us, a poppy tattooed on our body, in respect for those who have fallen, and arrange a recurring Direct Debit to the Royal British Legion, who do so much good work? Are we losing touch of what the poppy actually signifies in a muddy sea of co-opted xenophobia?

All good questions which this article straight up refuses to answer. Instead, we ask:

WHAT KIND OF POPPY WEARER ARE YOU? A FUN QUIZ

Okay, let’s play a fun quiz. Remember to keep count of your poppies!

How many poppies do you have on you right now?
A. Zero poppies. I hate the army and I hate the queen. (0 poppies)
B. One poppy, a white poppy. (-1 poppies)
C. A single brave red poppy. (5 poppies)
D. A single brave red poppy on my coat and a single brave red poppy on my jumper, a move known to patriots as “respect squared”. (7 poppies)

How many of these additional poppy items do you own?
A. Zero. I hate the army and I hate the queen. (0 poppies)
B. A crystal-studded poppy-shaped brooch from the official Royal British Legion online shop. (5 poppies)
C. A poppy tote bag from the official Royal British Legion online shop. (1 poppy)
D. A golden poppy fashioned from shell fuses fired during the Battle of the Somme, available for just £39.99 from the official Royal British Legion online shop, which remarkably, yes,is an actual thing you can buy. (10 poppies)

Does your car or van have an oversized decorative poppy mounted on the grille?
A. No. I hate the army and I hate the queen. (0 poppies)
B. I don’t have a car or van; I – like Jeremy Corbyn and vegetarians – ride a bicycle. (-1 poppies)
C. Yes. (1,000 poppies)

How many times have you said the word “respect” out loud this month?
A. Zero. I hate the army and I hate the queen. (0 poppies)
B. One to five. (1 poppies)
C. Five to one hundred. (5 poppies)
D. One thousand times. (10 poppies)

Add five “poppy points” to your score for each of these social media practises you have engaged in during the past week:
A. Spent half an hour and installed a Facebook app that sent out an invitation to everyone on your friends list just so you could add a poppy overlay to your profile picture.
B. Photoshopped a poppy onto your Twitter profile picture.
C. Changed any of your social media profile photos to a drawing of a battlefield with the sun setting over it.
D. Commented on a Guardian article about poppies.
E. Commented on a Daily Mail article about poppies.
F. Clicked “like” on a “1 like = 1 respect” post (5 poppies for each like)
G. Shared a vehemently pro-army status on Facebook that ends in “copy & paste if u agree………… doubt the majority of u will dare”.

Add ten “poppy points” if you have done any of the below:
A. Burnt a copy of the EU flag with a balaclava over your face but your mate Robbie messed up taking the video so instead there are just 600 blurry landscape photos of you struggling with a lighter in a back alley while shouting (not audible on the photo) “fuck Juncker!”
B. Dressed as a poppy to an England home game.
C. Very loudly explained to a poppy seller that you have already bought a poppy, right, but you’re stopping to buy one from him too because, “We’d all be speaking German if it wasn’t for you lot.”
D. Genuinely said or retweeted the words, “We should tell FIFA to get stuffed.”
E. Really aggressively asked someone, “Where’s your fucking poppy, mate?”

Subtract 10 “poppy points” from your score if you’ve found yourself doing any of the following:
A: Wondering idly, ‘When this thoroughly modern obsession with poppies became a thing? Like, it didn’t used to be like this, did it, when we were younger, and in fact only in the last couple of years has this become such a heated debate, maybe since 2013, 2014, and you’ve got to seriously wonder why that is, don’t you?’
B: I mean, why does everyone care, all of a sudden? It used to be just this quiet solemn mark of respect, and now it’s morphed and mutated into something grotesque, something bigger, and like: is it even OK to wear a poppy at all now, or are you basically saying, “Here, look at my racism badge”?
C: Is it a bit weird that a symbol that celebrates freedom and the hard, hard-won gaining of it by those who came before us has suddenly become this near-enforced act of compliance now? Is that a bit off, or nah?
D: Have we detached entirely now the signifier (poppy) and the sign (the dead being remembered), and now, in this, the year of our lord 2016, we are all just so overwhelmed with life and terror thereof that the only way we can cope is by getting really mad at each other over a small cardboard lapel pin?
E: Also, how fucking hard are they to keep on? Can we put all this energy into a fastening system beyond “a pin”?

Right, count up how many poppies you have and refer yourself to the chart below:

-10 – 0 poppies: We have a word for you, in England, right, and it’s “fucking wetty traitor cunt”.

0 – 3 poppies: If the world was just, people like you would be strung up in the Tower of London and shot to death by the army in the name of our beloved Queen, but due to democracy, or whatever, you are allowed to walk around, free. And to you I say: have a fucking word with yourself, yeah? And that word that you have with yourself should be “respect”.

3 – 10 poppies: You have bought a poppy (red or white) and you are just quietly wearing it and getting on with things and you’re not letting the poppy debate dominate your life, and maybe you volunteer for the Royal British Legion and maybe you don’t, and maybe you do stuff for veterans outside of wearing a poppy for eight days every year, and maybe you don’t, but honestly whatever – you’ve paid your pound (or more) and worn your poppy, and that’s about all you really need to do, now, really, isn’t it? I mean, do we actually need to talk about it any more than that?

10 – 100 poppies: You know every word to “God Save the Queen” and you sometimes do an extra, third minute of silence on Remembrance Sunday, and you believe Soldiers Should Be Paid Footballer’s Wages, and if I asked you where I could source a St. George’s flag you would be able to tell me – without Googling – at least three places within a 1km walk of my workplace.

100+ poppies: Probably overdoing it, mate, to be honest.

@joelgolby

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