This year was the first year we have had without our dear friend, Mac de Souza, who was a stalwart in our annual appeal and a staunch supporter of Poppy Scotland. It was hard not having Mac there, as he was a fixture of the appeal every year and had been for so many years. It was not the same without him.

That said, we set about making sure that Mac would be proud of us by trying to ensure that we had one of our best years and that looks to have been achieved.

We don’t have the final numbers in yet but, to date, we are up in most of our collections and so it looks like being a very good year, possibly even better than last year’s total of £33,500!