I THOUGHT the Standard's September 5 issue had reported so many interesting items that I was spoilt for choice to comment. Even the Brexit letters were good.

However two attracted my attention which were connected in my view.

My good friend (and history colleague) Stephen Nunn’s excellent piece on the celebrations of the end of the Second World War rang many memory bells with me.

Also he asked for personal memories of that time.

I hope he will not mind me pointing out the Morrison shelter, the steel and iron large table, protection for the family if a house collapsed, came later after the Anderson Shelter.

This was a corrugated iron structure placed in the gardens with a third dug into the ground, the remaining exposed third was protection against bomb blast.

Therefore this was the shelter that the majority of people ran to in an air raid.

The blast protection was only effective if the door way was not facing the blast. That’s why it saved my life in 1944 from a V1 explosion 75 yards away.

So therefore my memory. On VE day as a child (aged 11) I took it upon myself to catch a bus, on my own, to London’s West End to witness the excitement and happiness of the British public as the worry and tragedies of the previous six years fell from them.

I was to realise later I was witnessing a rather special event in the “history of the English speaking people" (to use a phrase from Winston Churchill).

That night we were all, to use another appropriate phrase, a vast and happy “Band of Brothers” as we celebrated in Piccadilly Circus, Trafalgar Square and at Buckingham Palace as the King and Queen waved to us from the balcony.

On the bus home) in the late hours I fell asleep and woke up in Walthamstow! I then caught another bus back to Hackney and home but fell asleep again and found myself in Islington. So I got off and walked home from there.

The togetherness of the British people in war and then in the first few days of peace, I don’t think we will ever witness again.

In today’s society we mainly find such coming togetherness and strong community spirit mainly in our villages.

Which neatly brings me to the other excellent report of Goldhanger and the tremendous effort to raise funding for the modernising of the village hall by a group led by Chris Joslin.

I attended the special opening as I was their district councillor for more than 23 years and have retained many friendships from those happy days.

It is a remarkable achievement by a group of dedicated villagers. I must comment on their new toilet facilities; I heard a number of visitors regard them the best in the district if not East Anglia.

I am sure we all wish the people of Goldhanger and its village hall all success in any future plans and events.

I have always considered the English village (especially in Essex) the epitome of the true English character.

Robert J S Long MBE

Tolleshunt Knights