Anyone Marking VE Day On Friday?

[BrandyandBabycham]

Apologies if there is an existing thread for this. We haven’t planned anything but DH saw a programme somewhere that you can follow, including afternoon tea in the garden & a singalong of “ We’ll Meet Again”. Is anyone celebrating?

Not me. But my friend is having a neighbourhood tea each in their front gardens.

We are having "social distance street party"

We are lucky enough to live in a close where we each have a front garden about 3x5m and fronting to a green, so we can each stay in "our patch" and chat to the neighbours around us.

Neighbour who organised it has a PA system so will play some music and people have planned to put up bunting.

We are ordering a takeaway afternoon tea from a local catering company to be delivered so we will have a nice picnic tea in our front garden.

We'll be putting the bunting & flags up.

I'll teach my dc the history of it and why some people still celebrate it but that's about it.

We're having a street party too - all sitting in our front gardens surrounded by bunting. DH has unearthed a CD with random wartime tunes on it, he's planning on setting up a Glastonbury-style PA system

I will not work from home and allow myself a bank holiday. I have a nasty feeling the nationalist/pro Brexit lobby will want to dictate the National mood on this one, and I will want to avoid that.

We’ll be hanging out flags, having pimms in the garden, go out to raise a toast with the neighbours at 6. I’m really looking forward to it!

This one has been on Facebook

I'd say that unfortunately it has become too politicised in recent years, and will be avoiding.

I'm just going to enjoy a day off from work. Not marking VE day at all. Our neighbours have sent something around about doorstep activities but I'm not getting involved. It's too much for me personally.

Quietly. Privately. Like I always do. I'm old. My dad served in the war. My mum list family in the Coventry Blitz.
VJ Day is the actual end of the war but we don't celebrate that despite British people (including children) still being held in Imperial Japanese internment camps and many dying up until that date. But that would mean giving thanks for atomic bombs and the horrible death and destruction that caused in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Not as Brexity. Especially as we are trying to get a trade deal with Japan.
This bank holiday was a cheap attempt to cash in on the sacrifice of millions for shabby Brexit cheer leading purposes.
I know this post was too long and full of boring facts. 🤷‍♀️

Some lovely ideas here. We live at bottom of cul de sac, front gardens facing each other OH is excited about it, bunting, flags, afternoon tea. Ditto neighbours, I am a bit meh about it, but will join in and probably enjoy it more than I thought.

I'm really not pleased that the May Day Bank Holiday was hi-jacked for this.

I'm feeling decidedly meh about it, and was horrified by the timetable sent around via FB/Social Media. If it were normal times, I'm sure we'd be celebrating with friends - in our last home, we had street parties for the Jubilee and then William and Kate's wedding, it was fun to have an excuse to get together and have an enormous BBQ. But the prescribed timetable and inability to actually socialise just puts me off this year.

I do agree GhostlyGlow. It was poorly implemented and done too late so people who had made plans for the bank holiday had to change them (of course that's irrelevant now anyway, but they didnt know that when they decided to make the change)

To be honest if it werent for covid I wouldnt be doing the street party - I'm not interested in marking VE day. But I do want to see the neighbours, have a chat and do something a little different so I will be doing that just to break the monotony if nothing else!

In the back garden with my parents (they live with me). I will make an afternoon tea and lots of Pimms. They will tell us all about their memories of being children in the war

Oh and I definitely wont be watching churchill's speech or doing a singalong

Putting up flags and bunting, taking tea in the garden. Not playing "We'll meet again" or any other intrusive music. Oh, and taking our days exercise in 40s clothes

So that’s why we got the fucking cheese scones as a substitute for the fruit scones in our Sainsbury’s collection. And here I thought I’d be able to just stroll into our Tesco express and pick some up before the clotted cream expires. Fucking flyers and their fucking suggestions

Yes DH and I will be drinking tea and eating sponge cake in our garden and remembering our parents, uncles, aunties and their friends who served in all three services and on the home front during the war.

I'll take some time to remember my lovely grandparents. That's it.

I'd like to because DH and I both have really nice memories from primary school when we were 6/7 of the 50th anniversary so would like to do that for DS (4)
How though? Tbh I don't think he's ever heard the word war before.

I'll call my nonna though, even though she's Italian and they have April 25th as their end of ww2 day.

It actually makes me feel a bit uneasy. I don't think we should keep "celebrating" this. I think it is time to move on.

I don't know if it is because I work in a European role with many German contacts. I was quite embarrassed explaining to a German contact why we don't have a bank holiday until later this week.

I don't feel the same way about Armistice day, which feels right to commemorate.

I'd like to avoid it (might be difficult, no one else shares my misgivings!). My dad was in the Far East in WW2 and not demobbed until 1946. VE Day, although marking a milestone, was not the end of the war, and people were fighting and dying well beyond May 1945.

My dad was a pacifist, never wore his medals and wouldn't wear a poppy for remembrance either. I shall think of him.

Not really. I would normally but it just feels a bit flat and pointless at the moment. I'll be using the day off to have a good spring clean then a drink in the evening for our online games night. I might make scones with the kids but that's about it.