Two friends asked for knitted poppies for Remembrance. More than 4,000 arrived, filling their Nottingham church.
Jo Turner and Polly Govis stood side by side in front of the poppies. Asked how it felt to see them, Jo said “very proud”, then “incredibly emotional”. She looked down, then back at the display, smiling as she held back tears. Both women laughed, and Polly said, “You’re going to have us in tears in a minute.”
Asked who she remembers, Jo said: “I have two great-grandfathers who fought in the First World War. I didn’t know them. They died before I was born. But I think of all the people who have nobody left to think about them.”
More than 4,000 handmade poppies fill the Church of the Good Shepherd, in St John Paul II parish, Nottingham. Jo and Polly both belong to the Friendship Group, and the idea was Polly’s. She is the parish’s volunteer gardener and a former police officer. Jo served in the Air Force. “I thought it would be nice for the friendship group to do something for Remembrance Day,” Polly said.
The group began knitting and crocheting, and appealed for poppies in the parish newsletter and on Facebook. One freezing Monday after Mass, Jo, Polly and friends gave up their seats by a garden centre fire to some cold women from Lambley. The Lambley women had just been talking about poppies, and later gave advice. Then, Jo said, “it just grew.”
Poppies arrived from as far as Redditch, and from people the group will never know. Mary offered a number. “She says, ‘I’d like to do 453. I lost a nephew in the Afghan war,’” Polly said. Mary and her friends knitted all 453. That is how many British personnel were killed in Afghanistan, and the A453 was renamed Remembrance Way in their honour.
The knitting became, Jo said, “a bit of a competition with each other.” From June, six or seven of them met twice a week to fix poppies onto army-surplus camouflage netting.
The display begins in one corner, with a single poppy beside a statue of St Joseph. The way it grows is Jo’s picture: a hamlet, then a village, a town, until, in Polly’s words, “it forms an army.” Strands of black wool hang down for the soldiers. In the opposite corner, beside the font where people are baptised, white poppies stand for peace.
On the sanctuary, the area around the altar, parish florist Michelle has set poppies among real flowers and greenery.
The Friendship Group meets every other Thursday afternoon for speakers, quizzes and outings. Most who come are retired, and many, Polly said, “have perhaps got no friends or family.” Anyone is welcome, Catholic or not. “It’s just about friends and friendship and socialising,” she said.
On Remembrance Sunday, 8 November, the country falls silent at 11am for those who died in the two world wars and the conflicts since. For Catholics, it falls in the month the Church sets aside to pray for the dead. That Sunday, the leftover poppies will be blessed and given out.
When Jo looks at the poppies, she thinks of “all the people who have nobody left to think about them.”
If Jo’s words have stayed with you, come and see the poppies, and remember, or pray for, someone you carry with you. You’ll find the Church of the Good Shepherd on Thackeray’s Lane, Woodthorpe, NG5 4HT. It is open on Tuesday and Thursday mornings in November, 10am to 12pm, and throughout the weekend. There is free tea and coffee, and for £1 you can guess how many poppies fill the front windows. Everything raised goes to the Royal British Legion.
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