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Jay Bardwell, 84, was just a few weeks shy of fifteen in May 1945.

In the afternoon of VE Day she enjoyed dressing up as Britannia to lead a fancy dress parade through the streets of Belmont (near Croydon, South London), followed by a party for all the children in the local church hall.

As she was one of the older children she was then invited to the adults’ celebrations in the nearby British Legion Hall. Finding the proceedings rather dull, Jay and two older boys managed to sneak off to get the train to Victoria, and to the wild celebrations in central London.

They made it as far as St James Park and were thrilled by the crowds before catching the last train home to Belmont. Jay crept through the back door only to find her mum being sick in the kitchen sink from all the party booze, and she slid off to bed without an interrogation!

Her parents never knew that she had been up to London that night, and she only told her mum fifty years later when her mother was ninety!

Image: Jay in 1945 (second from left) in her local church girls’ choir

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