By Geoff Fisher 
As this year’s VE Day celebrations will not be taking place in the way we had hoped for due to Covid-19, and because I am feeling a sense of nostalgia just now, I would like to share my memory of one of the most magical days of my life.
I was nearing my seventh birthday [in May 1945] and on the way home from school I called in at my grandfather’s shop – a watchmakers and jewellers, which was next to the paper shop in Reepham (and now the post office too) – and collected my little blue fairy cycle.
My grandfather [William Bishop] was a man of few words, but on this day we popped into the paper shop and came out with three Union Jacks, one each for my sister and brother and one for me.
He carefully tied them to the handlebar of my bicycle, at the same time telling me that the war was over and that my daddy would be coming home soon.
Grandad then sent me home on this glorious May day, with my flags fluttering in the breeze, to Booton Beck cottages, where my mother, two sisters and brother were waiting and I told them the great news! (I had a new baby sister, but Grandad didn’t think we should include her, being so young).
My father was in India and we had to wait until Boxing Day before he came home, and that was another joyous occasion.
Tessa Copley, Hertford
Above: Margaret Anne and William Bishop, possibly in the 1920s. Below: Edward Seely, Tessa Copley’s father, pictured in front of his father-in-law’s (William Bishop’s) watchmaker’s shop in Market Place, Reepham, with Renee Hatley (nee Symonds) (left) and Doris, a cousin of Tessa Copley’s mother, who was visiting from London; possibly 1936/37. Photos: submitted
Geoff Fisher