VE Day - A Young Child's View

I was three and a half years old and there was a big party in our street. I had been watching all the preparations and finally we children were all sat around the biggest table in the world and on the table was a HUGE cake with a big word on it. It wasn't my cake but it was for all of us. I was sitting on a bench with some other small children when the man with the camera caught hold of my arm and yanked me off the bench to sit me at the end of it. I was affronted and he hurt my arm and when he'd placed me at the end of the bench, there was no bench left to sit on so I cried.

And here I am, in the accompanying photo, right in the foreground and whilst the whole allied world is celebrating, I am crying.

There are other memories of this day: a fancy dress party and being allowed to stay up until it was dark because no one was at home. My parents and everyone else down our road were all out in the street, singing and dancing and drinking. Men had come to the house to help Dad get the piano out into the street where my mother played and people gathered round and sang and the beer glass rings from that night marked our piano until the end of it's days.

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