VE Day in 2020 is still being honoured... just differently

Fiona thinks that while the whole country celebrated the end of the war back in 1945 it won’t be the same when our lockdown ends

T his week sees a first. Skypes and Zooms I have done. But this time I am taking part in a virtual service. It is a recording to mark VE Day. The time 75 years ago when the fighting against Germany finally came to an end.

It is organised by our armed forces champion and all involved are asked to turn up at a church. Where, standing well apart, we do our separate readings.

Then it is off to the war memorial where the piper plays Flowers of the Forest. Flags are lowered and wreaths are laid. All this is filmed and edited together to make a service which appears on the council website.

It is not the way we would hope to remember that historic time of course. But it is an anniversary that cannot be ignored. My mother was 16 when the war in Europe came to an end.

Her father was a local air raid warden in Preston and, wearing a tin hat, her job was to carry his messages around the neighbourhood. My dad, meanwhile, was a 14-year-old living in Cumbria and he was doing his bit by collecting dandelion roots to make a disgusting form of coffee and rosehips to produce vitamin C rich syrup.

Luckily dad was too young to fight. Unlike the chief’s father who, aged 20, found himself in a constant battle in the final push across the Rhine with the Second Battalion Scots Guards.

Then there was the Macgregors’ granny. She was in charge of the West Perthshire Women’s Land Army, and seemed to spend her time ensuring that inmates from a nearby prisoner of war camp did not escape.

There are so many stories. You will have heard them from family and friends – or you may have been there yourself. If you were you will never forget that May day in 1945. When Winston Churchill made the announcement of the cessation of hostilities.

Millions came out of their houses and workplaces to celebrate. Tables and chairs were pulled outside, and great street parties were held. In Scotland they danced reels in the streets.

It was the great release. And it makes me wonder if the same will happen when we are finally allowed out? This is not on a par with a world war, of course. Yet we are still fighting an enemy, albeit an invisible one. Will folk go mad when the lockdown is lifted?

I don’t think so. I think we will all be

Will folk go mad when the lockdown is lifted? I don’t think so, I think we will all be cautious

rather cautious for some time to come. In the meantime, thank you to whoever left a box of goodies on my mother’s doorstep.

She opened it and was pleasantly surprised. Silently thanking some generous neighbour, she drank the can of fizzy martini and ate the bar of chocolate.

Then she looked more closely at the name on the carton. It had gone to the wrong address. I replaced the chocolate and dropped it off surreptitiously at the right house. Don’t tell anyone, will you?