News from Mr Grady
Hello Everyone!
Well, this week we find ourselves 75 years on from VE day. Now, as a Coventry-born boy, the Second World War and its impact on the home front was very much a thing of my early years - Coventry having been so devastated by the Blitz. I had relatives who had lived through a time that was by turns frightening, appalling, tragic, but also, according to their stories, in a strange way uplifting.
When people talk about the "Blitz Spirit" I had two grand-parents who knew what that was first-hand.
My grandmother had an Anderson shelter at the bottom of her garden, and I remember sitting under the very flimsy corrugated iron and thinking that it didn't look like it would stand a stiff breeze, let alone high explosives.
Those of us in my generation, certainly in Coventry, knew what it was to honour those who had lived through a very dark period, as we all had living relatives who had come through it, and we all had stories of friends or family who hadn't.
On Friday, when you see the variety of bunting, when you take part, remotely in tea-parties, or sing "we'll meet again" out of your windows, it's not a dry historical thing we're doing, it is a human connection that we're making, to all of the people that lived and died through a very dark six year period in this nation's history.
I know things may be tough and scary at the moment, they may be filled with doubt or worry, but the very fact that on Friday we will remember a moment of national relief and celebration 75 years ago should give us all hope.
So I hope that you sing lustily along with the nation words that perhaps have a more immediate ring than the melancholy we sometimes associate with Vera Lynn's song:
"We'll meet again, don't know where, don't know when...but I know we'll meet again, some sunny day."
I hope you're all staying well and safe,
Best wishes,
Mr Grady
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