A while ago I visited a graveyard to pay my respects. Turning around, I spotted a man with a shovel and felt duty bound to ask: ‘Do you dig graves?

‘They’re OK I suppose’ was his response.

In hindsight, his comment was amusing, although I stood in the moment feeling belittled and disrespected in a Goodfella’s sort of way. I had a fleeting desire to punish him for his slight by giving him a close up of the hole he had just dug, with the prerequisite horse's head for company as I asked "Am I a clown? Do I amuse you?"

I was brought up to treat others as I wish to be treated. Sadly I believe that I, like most of us, have failed. Although I attempt to err on the correct side or righteousness, inevitably we all have lulls.

We are nurtured to be respectful while being taught that respect should be earned. The message can be somewhat confusing in formative years, yet there are certain jobs where respect used to be a given. It was once the policeman and teacher who were revered. These professions have been replaced with serving or ex-servicepeople in recent times. Rightly we celebrate the warriors past and present, more so at this time of year time due to Remembrance Day.

There’s a thinning line between joshing about and being disrespected. I often get ‘baldie’ shouted at me by random strangers. Most recently it was screamed out of a car window from close quarters as I rode my bike in the recesses of Hertfordshire. Despite the apparent disrespect, I was impressed as to how they could see I was a slaphead through my Giro helmet.

This morning on GMTV they had a debate as to whether wolf whistling should be investigated by the police and if it constituted a hate crime. As is usual for the media, issues are black or white, whereas the devil is in the situational detail: A lady walking alone in a park late at night has the right to be concerned should a lone man wolf whistle her. Not so in broad daylight walking past a building site packed with builders who may just be acting the lad. I concur that both incidents may be unpalatable, but surely it is the intent of the action, not the action itself that is of importance? Maybe it’s the snowflake generation again finding a problem where there is not one to deflect attention away from the real issues we face.

Year on year, I become more concerned by the lack of poppies worn in the run up to the remembrance events. This is justified by those who mistakenly believe the symbol glorifies war or choose alternative ways to show respect, if at all.

I will be attending the Remembrance Day event in my local village, but parents are finding it harder to convince their offspring to engage. Long-gone great grandparents mean little to them and such events, always in chilly November, have too much competition with the endless choice of TV channels, video games and activity at their disposal, to save them standing around in the cold to pay respects to mythical long lost souls. It was in this mindset, and with the importance I place on ensuring my kids attend such events to teach them about the hardship and sacrifices others made so they could play Fortnight without redress, that a gift from the gods came recently. This gift answered the question of re-engaging the youth into fully understanding the sacrifices that went before them: the angel who appeared was the film director Peter Jackson.

Younger kids like to be relevant and detest anything ‘old’, be it their parents, Elvis or the PlayStation 3. A game changer, Jackson’s ground breaking film They Shall Not Grow Old has made the First World War accessible to all. If we can’t appreciate or understand the sacrifices given a century ago because of mistimed black and white film, the answer was blindingly obvious: Add colour, change the film speed and voiceover the footage. Make them human, give them an identity and maybe, as has proved the case, we will associate with them as they are brought back to life. It engaged my daughter so much that the next day she asked me if I had a spare poppy, which made me proud.

Respect? It is there in the young but needs to be nurtured and encouraged. The next time we go all snowflaky over an issue, we need to ask what would the petrified boys and girls of 1918 done? I guess a wolf whistle was the least of their worries when faced with the threats of the Germans, lost limbs, appalling conditions, diseases and mustard gas and for that, they have earned my eternal respect.