The Thamesmead Grump

POPPY TALES

 

 

The Thamesmead Grump has been helping with this year's Poppy Appeal on the stall in Morrison's in Thamesmead.

A few days ago, an elderly African lady came up to me clutching a crumpled up and rather worse for wear black plastic bin liner. "This is for you" she said.

Me, thinking, 'why does this lady want to give me a crumpled up and rather worse for wear black plastic bin liner?' So I said, "thank you very much" and took it off her. She then wandered off again.

It must have weighed about half a ton. When I managed to unravel it, there were hundreds of coins in small bags. They were all pennies and two pence pieces, in all, around £5 worth. Not a huge sum, but the coins all had that smell and patina that you get with copper coins that haven't been handled for a along time. She must have spent ages going round and gathering them all up to donate to the poppy appeal.

I didn't get a chance to thank her as she had already left.

On Friday, a couple came up to the desk and handed me a large cheque for £250 they had collected for the appeal. 

A very nice lady, Lorraine Joyce had been knitting and selling her home made poppies and donated all the money she made to us. The cheque by the way was just for the picture, she also handed me a large bag of banknotes and silver.

From time to time, I get posts appearing on my Facebook page that have originated from an organisation calling itself "Britain First." 

They are mostly of the racist and abusive type and full of claims about how they think we should all respect our armed forces and veterans.

The way they show their respect is by stealing photographs of murdered soldier, Lee Rigby and using them in their political campaigns. His family have asked them to stop doing this but they have taken no notice.

Their latest stunt is to go out and harass people collecting for the poppy appeal. They try to get their photographs taken with volunteers and claim that they are "protecting" them from being harassed by Islamic and left wing extremists. The Royal British Legion have asked them to stop doing this, but as with Lee Rigby's family, this request has been ignored.

In the six years that I have been collecting for the poppy appeal, I have never been harassed by anyone; not even as much as a funny look. I do not need or require any help from a bunch of neo-Nazi retards when out poppy selling. If any of them cross my path, they will get a full and frank explanation of what they can do with their assistance.

Oh yes! And you might want to think twice the next time any of you are considering sharing any of their propaganda. If a "Britain First" post comes up on your Facebook page, you might want to direct whoever sent it to you to this page.