Street Party for VE Day + 75

After almost 8 weeks of lock-down the 75th Anniversary of VE Day was greeted with great enthusiasm by Angie and her neighbours.

So much had been planned for this weekend – concerts, street parties, church services... – and all had been cancelled. So when an invitation for a Lock-Down Street Party landed on our doormat, we just had to be part of it.  "Place a table and chairs outside your house," said the invitation. "Make your own picnic food and have a few drinks." It wouldn't be the same as a real street party, of course, but would surely be a long-remembered, unique event.

Buying a 'shop' cake would not, I reasoned, be in the spirit of the day, for there can't have been many cakes in the shops in 1945. However, with only hours to go before the party, I realised that there was no caster sugar in the kitchen cupboard, so it would have to be Demerara. A tablespoon or two of strong coffee should turn it into a nice coffee cake, so that's what it would be.

Though I say it myself, I do make a decent sponge cake, though it's hardly rocket science – just 3 eggs, 6oz of self-raising flour, 6oz of sugar and a good whisk. Wish I'd taken longer with the icing, though. Not that it mattered – it was all gone by sundown.

You'll notice that we spent much of the afternoon taking photos of one another... whilst keeping a safe distance away, of course.

It's worth remembering that all this jollity did have a serious side. The joy of emerging from lock-down for one sunny afternoon is a pale shadow of the elation our parents and grandparents must have felt on Tuesday May 8th 1945, after being 'locked down' in bloody war for six years.  I envy their freedom to celebrate in crowds, but not what they'd been through.