I was quietly watching the Armistice Day parade on Sunday, the veterans of any war make me feel quite humble.

I know I've got a strange thought process but it made me think about the artefacts of war that now have a completely different use to their original intention. I wouldn't mind a pound for every house I've been into that had a pair of brass vases with fluted necks sitting on the mantle piece.

A lot of today's generation don't realise that these are in fact shell cases that were fired from the big artillery field guns. If you turn them upside down you can still see the firing pin; scarily these haven't always been deactivated. In a similar vein the leather stick stand pictured above is in fact a carrying case for field gun shell.