VE Day Friday 8th May

We celebrated the 50th anniversary at the theatre I worked at in 1995. The building hadn't changed since the war and with so many people in costume there was a real feeling that we had gone back in time. There was even a young lad in a trilby and mackintosh offering us nylons and knicker elastic!

It was to have been a wonderful piping celebration with a special tune written by a pipe major and we were all going to play “The Battle’s O’er” followed by the “VE75” tune in “celebrations” all over the country. Locally Lee-on-the-Solent had a big planned event with a parade and two pipe bands. All now obviously, and sensibly, curtailed. However, I am fortunate, there is a very small local cemetery, with some Second World War Graves including a few from the Commonwealth Graves Commission, the white Portland Stone ones that you see all over Flanders, close enough that I can legitimately walk there from my house, so I plan to take my pipes and play, as planned, at 3pm, in commemoration of those who did not come home. I will of course dress appropriately in the kilt belonging to my Grandfather.

We are taking a couple of chairs and a table to the end of our drive where we will be waving at the neighbours. We will all be much more that 2metres apart.
I’ve got loads of bunting left from a St. George’s event we had in the village. Is it OK to use that rather than the union flag, of which I have none?

Totally get that Sark. As usual it is different things to different people. For me it will always be remembrance.

DH said he does remember a lot of street parties when he was young, they had one each time a serviceman arrived home after the war, apparently. He remembers all the jelly and blancmange.

I can understand that, Sark, of course.

For us it is and will always be a celebration of liberating the islands of German occupation.

It's a service of remembrance.
When, since that first VE Day and possibly the next, was it a celebration?

We will be celebrating on May 9th - Liberation Day of Guernsey and the Channel Islands. We were due to fly out to celebrate with family but obviously that is not going to happen now.

For me VE and VJ day are more about remembrance, though I can understand people being relieved and I guess happy that war was over.

Yes Bluebelle, my close family was somewhere in the far east, my family did not know where they were and if they would ever return. The fighting was still raging on as you will know.

I have never celebrated I don’t know anyone who ever has since the actual event itself which was a wonderful event and needed celebrating perhaps it’s more of a village thing it’s certainly passed me by I ve never seen anything advertised for our town to do

fiachna my Dad was still in Burma till a year after 1946

I wont be celebrating as I do not feel it is appropriate, many did not come home. With the state our country is in at present,and people ill and dying, health workers and other key workers struggling what is there to celebrate? However, it is not for me to say what other people do. Apart from anything else while everyone was celebrating VE Day in 1945, I had a close family member who was still fighting in the far east. Not everyone was celebrating even then. I know my family werent as they did not know if their loved one would return or not.

My cul de sac will have afternoon tea with everyone sitting in their own front garden.

I think everyone is being encouraged to make their own decorations and have a tea and a toast at 3pm. Whether this involves neighbours depends I suppose on what they're like, but we are planning to have an online family tea and for the children to show me pictures or decorations they've made so I can look impressed on the phone! I will sit alone with a cupcake but I'm sure the family will have a table decorated and a cake in red white and blue, so just seeing them all will be something.

It's Anzac Day tomorrow.
It is already Anzac Day in Australia as I think the service is held at 5.30 am.

Of course, I think the usual services will not be taking place but will be televised or broadcast on the radio.

We are very lucky in our small Close that we get very little traffic. So most of us will take our own chairs/ food and drink.
We will have bunting from each bungalow to the nearest telegraph pole. There will be music ( supplied by me)

We’re having afternoon tea in the front garden as a village . I shall decorate with bunting and we’ll have tea and cakes, sat out there yelling across the road to the neighbours lol

I knitted a lot of poppies which we were going to use to decorate the old telephone box for VE celebrations. It is in the next village so I can't go and spend time there doing it and I haven't any of the netting I was going to fix them to. Maybe I'll make a garland of them on my front wall.

We have had a letter through all our doors inviting us to decorate our houses in red ,white and blue and have a street party/ picnic in our drives at 12 noon.
We are quite an elderly group with just a few newcomers, I don’t know how it will pan out.
As of today I have not spoken to anyone else about it, I also do not know who instigated it and posted the letters.
I am fairly ambiguous about it in the current crisis.
Could be a good idea or not?