Bells to mark VE Day anniversary

St John’s Kirk will mark the anniversary of VE Day during the ringing of the bells on Friday and Sunday.

The COVID-19 pandemic has failed to silence the bells of the kirk, with them ringing out to honour key workers over the past few weeks.

In addition to‘Auld Lang Syne’and ‘Abide With Me’, which have ended each performance, the bells will play Westering Home and a celebration reel to mark 75 years since the defeat of Nazism.

Westering Home is a Scots ballad about home coming and will remember all those in the armed services and in PoW or internment camps, scattered across the world and far from home, who, suddenly knew they may see home and family again when the fighting in Europe stopped.

A spokesperson for St John’s Kirk said:“In remembering VE Day, there is so much resonance to the current isolation that we are enduring and as we long for the return of normality we will be only too aware on VE Day of how different our pain is to the years of suffering during the war.

“It took many years for the wartime problems to be resolved, and we too will face a long path to a new normal, but the rediscovery of courage and kindness will surely continue into the way we live when the Lockdown ends.”

A service with the Rev John Murdoch, minister of St John’s and St Leonard’s-in-the-Fields, is on the kirk website every Sunday at https://www. st-johns-kirk.co.uk