Talking Point with Vicky Turrell: 'I was named Victoria in honour of this great day'
I was born to the sound of cheering, but the cheering was not for me it was for the fact that World War II was over. It was Victory in Europe Day and Churchill said, “We may allow ourselves a brief period of rejoicing”. The whole country had waited for this momentous announcement on the ‘wireless’. My birthday was May 8th, 1945. I was named Victoria in honour of this great day.
Watch more of our videos on ShotsTV.com
and on Freeview 262 or Freely 565
Flags always fly on my birthday and I am lucky in so many other ways; our country grew as I did. From sugar rationing to sweets every day, from my mother making our clothes on her Singer sewing machine to shops selling clothes so cheap it was not worth her while and from cars on our lane being a rare sight to traffic jams. We were lucky enough to have a telephone, but most people did not and now everyone carries a phone with them. How could we have ever believed that life could change so much?
When I was 50, I began to realise what a special birthday I had. I decided to make a scrap book record of that day. I unearthed this book last week and it is full of my visit to London in 1995. The special stamps created for that day are headed ‘Peace and Freedom’, one shows the joyful crowds celebrating in London. There is also a letter from an older friend who was a sergeant in the ATS with an anti-aircraft battery on Hyde Park in London. She wrote to me -
‘In the evening of VE Day, I went with several others from the Gun site (where I worked) to join thousands of people outside Buckingham Palace: all shouting ‘We want the King’. He and the Queen came out on the balcony and waved to us.
Afterwards we strolled down The Mall with crowds of people all singing and dancing for joy, that the war in Europe was over at last.’
How ever could we have another war?
On a much less momentous note, the birds here are not getting on together very well. During the day all is harmonious. We have the robins, the blue tits and the great tits visiting the bird table. All are paired up and seem to be nesting in peace. But when I came down this morning the bird table was in disarray and covered with raucous rooks. They were in a mass around the seed feeder and demolished it in a few minutes. One took the coconut feeder in its beak and dropped it on the lawn to devour its fat filled contents. What a pointless devastation: there was enough for all.
