ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½

On Sunday May 8th, 2005, I shall be celebrating my 74th birthday quietly with my family. But 60 years ago I celebrated it quite differently, I was 14 years old on VE day, May 8th, 1945.

I was born in Peckham, South London, into a family of 6 children and I lived there all through the war, apart from when our school was evacuated at the beginning of what was called the "phoney war", so I was only away from London for a short time.

My 14th birthday is one I will never forget, there was such excitement, everybody was out in the streets. The men and boys collected huge amounts of wood from the bombed out houses all around us, (there were no UPVC front doors in those days!) and they built this massive bonfire in the middle of the road. Right opposite our house was another road, so the bonfire was lit right in the middle of the road junction.

My father was the proud owner of a Radiogram which was his pride and joy, but he allowed it to be carried out into our front garden so everyone could enjoy the music and everyone brought out chairs and whatever food anyone could spare was shared around.

Nobody wanted that day to end, least of all me. I now felt I was a grown woman and would soon be starting my first job. That fire took days to finally go out and when it did, it had burnt a large crater in the road! As there were only a few horse and carts about at this time, never any cars down our roads, nobody seemed to bother about just another crater in the road. I can't remember when the road was ever repaired, but I'll never forget my 14th birthday.

© Copyright of content contributed to this Archive rests with the author. Find out how you can use this.