A Wigan school's poppy waterfall is exactly the kind of local thing worth stopping for

I am useless at keeping on top of what is happening around Wigan. Between work, the school run and the endless admin of family life, local events tend to reach me about three days after they have finished. So when something in my own town lands in front of me, I try to pay attention.

This week it is a school in Wigan that has unveiled a poppy waterfall ahead of Remembrance Day, as reported by the Manchester Evening News. It is a simple thing on paper: a display, made by a school, marking the season. But it is the sort of thing I want my kids to see rather than just hear about in an assembly.

Remembrance is hard to explain to a young child. You do not want to frighten them, and you do not want to turn it into a history lecture they will forget by teatime. A visual tribute like a poppy waterfall does the job far better than I can. It gives them something to look at, something to ask questions about, and something that ties the whole thing to their own town rather than to a page in a book.

That is the bit I keep coming back to. Wigan gets a rough ride in the national press, and most of what people outside the borough hear about us is not the stuff I recognise from my own street. What I recognise is schools putting in the effort, staff giving up their time, and families turning up to see it. Local pride sounds like a cliche until you are the one standing there with a seven year old asking why the poppies are falling.

There is a practical point in this for me as a working dad, too. I spend a lot of energy planning the big stuff: the days out, the theatre trips, the things that need booking and paying for. The free, local, walk-round-the-corner stuff slips down the list. Then a school does something like this and I realise my kids do not need another ticket booked. They need me to say yes to twenty minutes in the cold looking at a display.

So this is my nudge, mostly to myself. If you are in and around Wigan over the coming days, keep an eye out for what local schools and community groups have put together for Remembrance. It costs nothing, it does not need a timetable, and it quietly does more for your kids than another afternoon in front of a screen.

And to the school behind the poppy waterfall: thank you. You have made my job as a dad a bit easier this week, and you have reminded me to look closer to home before I start planning the next big thing.