Below response from our UK son... (poignant especially to me as I also lost the middle finger on my right hand due to a mechanical "crushing" accident. Over the years I have come to deal with mine in times of stress by saying quietly to myself "Read between the lines"):
"I watched it being constructed and was one of the people crushed in to see the final display
I have one of the poppies mounted on the living room wall !
He lost a finger making them...
It took 300 people just over a year to make all the poppies using as little machinery as possible. “It was the electric machinery that took my hand,” Cummins says, referring to the accident he had in April. “I was rolling clay, my top got caught and my hand went in – one of the guards wasn’t on so my fingers were flattened, like in Who Framed Roger Rabbit?.” The middle finger from his right hand had to be amputated – which, as an artist, must have been devastating. “I’m not sure what I felt about it at the time – I didn’t actually feel any pain because it crushed all the nerves in my fingers. I’m still making things, I just can’t throw a wheel yet until my ring finger’s been fixed.” (Later, he shows me the type of machine that did it with a chuckle, as if pointing out a mischievous child.)"
On 14 November 2015 at 15:50 to psheley