I just spoke to mum about her memories of VE Day. She was 18 years old and working as a clerk in a factory and living in Finsbury Park.

Mum and a girlfriend from her youth club took a tube train up to Piccadilly Circus where they joined thousands of others to dance and sing and make merry in the streets of the Capital. Mum said there were American GIs and British soldiers and everyone laughed and talked and danced through the streets.

During the war mum had regularly visited her school friend Joyce in St Albans. They went dancing at the Victoria Hall in Saturday nights where they met American GIs from the nearby base.

One of the soldiers was an Italian American and he and mum became friends. She knew that he was engaged to an Italian American girl back home in New York but he was lonely and missed his fiancée and family. He wrote to mum when he was sent to France and in our photo albums there is a photo of him in uniform walking along the front in Cannes. Mum was convinced that he didn’t make it out of Europe as his letters suddenly stopped. She still feels sad at the thought that he didn’t get to marry his girl back home. However, on a happier note, mums school friend Joyce did meet an American soldier at one of the Saturday night dances in St Albans. After the war they married and Joyce went to live in America. Mum and she continued to write to each other until just a couple of years ago. I remember Joyce’s granddaughter visiting us in London when I was a child. It was a lifelong friendship by letter.

My mother met my father in Southend at the time of the next allied Victory – VJ Day in August 1945.