VE Day 75th anniversary

The 75th anniversary of VE Day was celebrated locally in quite a muted fashion. I don't think people's hearts were in it really, given the social distancing measures in place. I had a wander around the village but there didn't seem to be any street parties, unlike in some places where people have held 'parties' with everyone sitting in their own front gardens. There were a few folk sitting in the back street next to mine, but it hardly seemed to qualify as a party. I did, apparently, miss the piper playing in the grounds of the church. You can see a video of that HERE.

There was some bunting around and a few decorated windows.

My daughter apparently spent the morning baking scones and cakes, using recipes she found in my late mum's old cookery file, which I thought was quite sweet of her. They had 'afternoon tea' in the garden later. She asked me if I had any mementoes of VE day and I've searched my old photos but I couldn't find anything. My parents were just a little too young to be conscripted during the war. They both left school in the later years of the war and took jobs in the General Post Office, dad as an apprenticed telephone engineer and mum as a telephonist. I seem to remember her telling me she was seconded to London for a few months and I think she may have been there on VE Day but that's all I know. Dad later did National Service in REME (Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers) but that was after the war ended. In all my rummaging, I did unearth this rather nice photo (below) of the two of them taken in 1947.

Someone else in Saltaire had obviously unearthed some old photos too, as there were a few displayed in a window with the details of who they were. They were nice to see.

'We'll meet again...' seems quite an appropriate anthem now, as then. For all the horrors and individual sufferings of this viral pandemic, I still don't think it comes near the struggle, sacrifice and privations suffered by the generations that had to endure the two World Wars.