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VE Day came suddenly as far as I was concerned. I was just 9 years old and had grown up accustomed to having no street lights, grown ups being away from home,and food always being in short supply. That evening everyone was very cheerful and the black-out blinds and curtains were thrown aside. Everyone was excited because at last we were at PEACE. My father, a doctor, had been away for much of the war at a hospital for evacuee children who had TB in Market Drayton in the Midlands. He was home on this special day and he took m mum and me out in the car that evening. What a sight I saw. We went first to the centre of Giffnock, our little community. The largest building was the Tudor Cinema - an entertainment centre actually. It included a very large cinema, a ballroom, a large restaurant, and large rooms used for example by a large bridge club. The ladies of Giffnock loved to pla bridge and a hundred or more of them spent afternoons or evenings playing cards. The building was a large white art deco structure that had been extensively outlined with neon tubing giving a wide range of colours. I had never seen neon lights before but on this special evening they were switched on and nearly all of them worked despite not having been used since 1939. It was a wonderful sight and I remembered marvelling at such a pretty scene. There was an large space in fron of the cinema and this evening it was packed with revellers. The ballroom was on the first floor and the windows had been thrown open so that the live orchestra could turn round from their usual position and play out to the crowd below. Everone was dancing and they seemed to be really happy. After half an hour or so m father took us into lasgow to see all the neon lights there. There were hundreds of places with their displays onthough none were as attractive as those on the Tudor building! It was such a special night that I still remeber it as though it was yesterday.

A year later came VJ Day but we hardly noticed it. There were no special celebrations which is a pity since for tose who had been fighting in the far east this second day of peace must have been a wonderful relief.
One other special wartime memory concerns our grey and red parrot "Polly" who had been brought home by my great uncle who worked on the merchant ships to east Africa and India. This bird had lived in our home frim some time before I had been born. One day my mother brought home something that i had never seen before. Some bananas. I was given one as a very special treat. As I ate slices of this special fruit the parrot went wild in her lage cage. We realised that she recognised something that she must have eaten many years before and cleatrly she wanted some now. We gave her a bit which she devoured and after that always shared our bananas with her. Clearly it was not just people who were deprived of something during the war years.

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