V.E.ra day 75

Lived through the Spanish Flu and now living through Coronavirus.  Born in the same year as Vera Lynn (1917), my mother, Vera, was in Blackpool on VE Day endeavouring to teach radio procedure to dispirited aircrew when they knew that they would probably never fly as the end of the war was imminent.  Much has been forgotten, but the morse code can still be rattled off on request.  She saw the Crystal Palace burn.  She helped coordinate hospital bed availability across south-east England for St Thomas's Hospital at the time of Dunkirk.  She had to wait 18 months from her war-time honeymoon until she could join her husband in Egypt, then travelled the tropical world with him while he worked to develop the supply of oil that shaped the 20th century.