Two great bunches of bananas resting on the arms of his chair.

No jewellery except a single band of gold around his wedding finger.

Sometimes holding cards, sometimes holding a cigarette, sometimes holding the hand of the girl he married shortly after demobbing sometime around '46.

They were man's hands. Hands, which, metaphorically at least, had ripped the chains from the gates of Belsen.

He was among the first Allied soldiers into the German concentration camps during the Second World War. He was younger then than I am now.

Not that he ever spoke about it. He told the girl once, briefly, then never mentioned it again.

He went insane long before I was old enough to play cards with him or smoke with him or introduce him to the girl who maybe one day I'll ask to marry me.

I thought of my old Uncle Tom on Remembrance Sunday.

Wrong conflict, strictly speaking. And he didn't fall fighting.

But I thought of him anyway. He sacrificed half his youth and eventually all his mind so it was sort of appropriate.

It was the first time I've ever attended a service.

Trouble is, these things combine a lot of stuff I'm naturally suspicious of: religion, politicians, ceremony and Sunday mornings.

I promise not to forget, I told my grandad once, just don't make me go and remember.

I think he understood, even though he didn't really understand.

Sunday morning, though, there I was at Halifax Town Hall.

It was cold. Brass bloody monkeys. I was hunched up in a big woollen coat while these old boys, in their 70s and 80s, stood, spines like rods of iron, in their shirt sleeves, medals gleaming in the frost.

They had fingers like bananas too. Maybe it's a generational thing.

There were quite a few young people there. My age and less.

Surprising really, because each year we're told the next generation don't understand or appreciate the sacrifices made.

And each year newspapers wheel out a couple of teenagers who don't know what the poppy symbolises or why the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month is important.

And each year we're told this proves the world is forgetting, when all it proves is that every generation has its share of idiots.

The young men of 1914-18 would probably understand that. They were led by their idiots after all.

An old girl recognised me as I stood shivering. "I read you every week," she said, thumping me hard on the back. "You write a lot of nonsense."

But it was her and my great uncle Tom's generation who died for my right to write it. So what could I say? I said thanks – and meant it.