VE Day commemorations began today, building towards the 8th May and the Yarnbombers have surprised, comforted and delighted us, as always. We have my lovely pal Jan commemorating the liberation of the Channel Islands, which is where she grew up.

Of course their VE Day was the 9th May as this is when they were liberated. I was so pleased to see it there, as I found the history of the Channel Islands in the war thought provoking (I researched it for Sisters at War by me as Milly Adams).

We have a farmer, nurses, poppies, servicemen, the whole gamut. Please enjoy and join me admiring the Thirsk Yarnbombers, and may we remember all who fought, in their way, and that there was no Victory in Japan until 15th August.

I had a boyfriend whose father was a prisoner of the Japanese. He was never the same again. My first novel had nurses travelling to Singapore, and then it fell. Their imprisonment was bestial and long.

Mum was on a convoy to Singapore to nurse when it fell. Instead she continued to India where she nursed the injured and ill of the Burma Campaign.

After the war I met one of her friends who had been imprisoned by the Japanese. Again, it never left her but one of her most poignant memories is of the Cathedral given over to the injured, where she nursed as the Japanese approached. She remembered the smell of Chrysanthemums but could never decide whether they were actually there, or it was a remembered scent of times before the horror.

My father was in the Battle of Britain, and could never watch or attend a Remembrance Service because he had to live with the fact that as well as fighting himself, he had to send up his young men, very young men. It was almost more than he could bear, as most did not survive. That generation was the best of the best.