We’ll celebrate VE Day at our stay-at-home garden party – Jayne Dowle

In years to come, I wonder how my own children will recall tomorrow? The 75th anniversary of the end of the Second World War in Europe won’t be the event they anticipated.

Celebrations my daughter, Lizzie, was to be involved in, including visits to care homes to entertain elderly residents, are no more. The coronavirus pandemic has curtailed everyone’s plans.

Parties and concerts have been cancelled because of lockdown. Sadly, a veterans’ parade along the Mall in London won’t go ahead.

And us? We’ll be sitting in our front garden in full 1940s gear, joining in the national VE Day Stay At Home Street Party.

We only decided to go for it on Sunday. And now we’re on full-scale manoeuvres, setting up the big fold-up table and transporting half the contents of the house, including the wing-back armchair, hearth-rug and bureau through the front door. For authenticity, you understand.

Our house was built in 1920. As I stand at my kitchen window, I’m often reminded that it played its own small but significant part in the Second World War.

When we were renovating it four years ago, a nice old gentleman stopped by to chat. “I spent the war in your kitchen,” he said. “I was friends with the lad who lived here. We used to play Monopoly and Cluedo at the kitchen table, then hide under it when the bombs fell on Sheffield.”

He pointed to a corner under the kitchen window: “That’s where the Anderson shelter was. It was our den headquarters. We had a gang and we would try and hunt down Nazi spies.”

This gentleman’s vivid memory of 70-odd years ago has given our house an added dimension. I often think of the family who lived here and wonder what they would make of us, with our modern ways and white walls.

Our stay at home VE Day party is an excuse to let our hair down just a little. However, as plans have taken shape, it has brought the influence of past generations into focus – and breathed life into celebrations which had fallen flat.

Lizzie and I have been practising rolling our hair and drawing lines up the back of our legs for stocking seams. We’re looking at photographs of her grandma for inspiration. She was a sergeant in the ATS for the entire duration, deployed from home in a Bedfordshire village to various locations, including Redcar.

She died six years ago, at the age of 92, and we never found out exactly what her wartime role was. She took that secret with her, but her legacy lives on in her only granddaughter, who bears an uncanny resemblance.

As I look at the home-embroidered table linen I’m going to use, inherited from grandmothers and aunties over the years, I think of the other women and girls – left at home, and so anxious about husbands, fathers, sons and sweethearts fighting overseas.

I’ve got the menu sorted, with pork pies, sausage rolls and scones. I’m thinking of putting my grandma’s ‘National’ tabletop mincing machine on display. She was a cook in the ATS and left to get married in 1941. I’ve got lots of her things all around my kitchen. They are a tangible link to a woman who played her own part in the war effort, feeding the troops sequestered in Pontefract Castle following the Dunkirk evacuation.

I’ve sourced materials for homemade red, white and blue bunting, raiding mum’s stash of remnants and ribbon. The issue of decorations initially raised a moral dilemma. Are Union Jack flags an essential purchase? We decided probably not, under the circumstances, so we’re embracing the wartime spirit of make do and mend.

And music, of course. I’ve spent several happy lockdown hours compiling a virtual playlist of songs from the 1940s to play as we sit there, hopefully chatting with neighbours and passers-by – from a safe social distance, of course.

I have my own favourites, most of them tearjerkers, but it’s been a collaborative online effort with my parents, who are planning their own small VE Day celebration. My dad is particularly pleased with his choice Eleven More Months and Ten More Days, recorded by Billy Cotton and his Band in the 1930s.

Dad has turned this jolly tale of a hapless chap sitting out a stretch in the cells into his own ‘lockdown song’. It comes with extra irony now; he’s recently been instructed to shield for a further 12 weeks because of his heart problems.

We can learn almost everything we need to know about suffering and survival from older generations; the 75th anniversary of VE Day provides a significant occasion for sombre reflection. However, amidst the thoughtful moments, we shouldn’t forget a very important thing. We must celebrate life.

Editor’s note: first and foremost - and rarely have I written down these words with more sincerity - I hope this finds you well.

Almost certainly you are here because you value the quality and the integrity of the journalism produced by The Yorkshire Post’s journalists - almost all of which live alongside you in Yorkshire, spending the wages they earn with Yorkshire businesses - who last year took this title to the industry watchdog’s Most Trusted Newspaper in Britain accolade.

And that is why I must make an urgent request of you: as advertising revenue declines, your support becomes evermore crucial to the maintenance of the journalistic standards expected of The Yorkshire Post. If you can, safely, please buy a paper or take up a subscription. We want to continue to make you proud of Yorkshire’s National Newspaper but we are going to need your help.

Postal subscription copies can be ordered by calling 0330 4030066 or by emailing [email protected]. Vouchers, to be exchanged at retail sales outlets - our newsagents need you, too - can be subscribed to by contacting subscriptions on 0330 1235950 or by visiting www.localsubsplus.co.uk where you should select The Yorkshire Post from the list of titles available.

If you want to help right now, download our tablet app from the App / Play Stores. Every contribution you make helps to provide this county with the best regional journalism in the country.

Sincerely. Thank you.

James Mitchinson

Editor