The Solent - (Armistice Mess): In a surreal twist on the old whoretime confetti theme a WWII DeHavilland Split Beaver aircraft showered the departing QE2 with one million red paper poppies as the craft left Southampton docks for the last time enroute for its new berth in Dubai.
The commercial liner is due to open in 2010 as a floating brothel assuming a successful $100 refit following this morning's fiasco when she hit a sandbank outside Poole Harbor.
The Armistice Day poppy salute left many onlookers baffled.
"The new owners must have paid a fortune for such a kudos display," Mrs Doris Blunkett (no relation) said today.
"Personally I thought it all a bit pointless. Unless of course they were opium poppies, in which case it could have been a covert signal to the Taleban Drug Barons.
"And who's paying up to sweep up all the petals?
The Duke of Edinburgh is 103.
