It’s not actually VE Day, as people keep calling it but 75 years since VE Day. Europe hasn’t won anything today, not even the race to have the least deaths from Covid-19.
I don’t want to be a killjoy but I wonder when we will stop thinking that winning a war all that time ago was the best thing to happen to our country. I always approach the way we teach the Second World War in Primary school with a sense of discomfort. I’m sure I’m being unreasonable but we teach it as if it was fun. We celebrate it, rather than commemorate it. I know that things have to be enjoyable to hook a child’s interest and it is so easy to do with this topic. There are songs, dances food, games and stories that have every element in them you could hope for. However, I am often left with the feeling that the lesson that it would have been better to never have had the war in the first place has been missed in all the fun.
Right now, people are desperate for some good news and so are embracing the socially distant street party with a vengeance. It’s like the clapping on steroids. People are having invites, that sound like orders, shoved through their letterbox.
You will join us for tea on your front lawn at midday.
You will dress up in 1940s costume.
You will decorate your house in red white and blue bunting.
You will sing We’ll Meet Again.
You will listen to my Uncle Fred playing the Last Post on the cornet he found in the loft.
This hasn’t happened in my street. Luckily, for Henning Wehn, German comedian, who could not believe his luck when he first came to England to discover a war film on the TV on a rainy Saturday afternoon, he has been invited.
I could be suffering from FOMO (fear of missing out) but as a slightly socially anxious person I couldn’t be more relieved. I don’t have to think of an excuse to not socialise and my over-thinking brain won’t be wondering why we need to celebrate a war as an excuse to put up bunting and eat cake.
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