Thread Fourteen: The landscapes of France and Flanders…London…have offered of themselves…their connections to us. We have rediscovered, found, observed and, above all, we have become connected. In finding the threads between the thimbles and needles we have bore witness the fabric of history…perhaps patchwork…but ours for all time.
Thread 13: From Buckingham Palace Road we turn onto Birdcage Walk, bypassing the tourists who have lined up along the gates to view the Guards. Instead of joining the onlookers we choose instead to visit the Guards Chapel and more.
Thread 12: I conduct a reconnaissance of the gift shops anticipating a volume or two to rest amongst others in a tall stack of reading to do. Though centenary titles continue to abound, we are starting to see interest in the immediate aftermath of this conflict that gave birth to the world as we know it today.
Thread Eleven: A chance to pause within the history of the Victoria and Albert Museum. This day I have come here especially for the building’s ornamentations in situ, not within exhibition cases but part of the built structure itself.
Thread Ten: The soldier statue stands on Platform 1 alongside a wall within Paddington Station, with a letter in his hands. He is reading. Please look after this soldier.
Thread Nine: Headstones and memorials require continual maintenance and often I have been delighted to see their work in progress as gardeners and stone masons tend the myriad of plantings and built landscapes.
Thread Eight: Some are surprised to see that the Menin Gate Memorial is within the city, a short walk from the square where traffic is stopped for every evening’s Last Post by the buglers of the Fire Brigade.
Thread Seven: 1922 – Kate Palmer of Victoria, B.C. journeyed to Belgium to visit her son’s grave at Woods Military Cemetery, south of Ypres.
Thread Six: …and there it sat upon the rampart, left by someone who chose this place here by the stone, above the canal, towards the Kiplinglaan.
Thread Five: The steady crunch of loose gravel beneath our feet announces our arrival to the names recorded here. As we move across from stone to grass the silence is heartfelt…it is respect. A mist upon the horizon, silhouettes at the Stone of Remembrance…