The Heritage Buddy

​Not long after my nan passed away last year, she had left a lot of family history behind, including the amount of keepsakes she kept. This gave my mother a good excuse to make good use of her Ancestry subscription that me and my sisters bought her for her birthday. We already knew that my paternal great grandfather was a construction worker and his family owned and ran a construction business in the heart of my borough; my father once drove us around the neighbourhood he helped to build pre-WW1, or at some point in the very early Edwardian era. After beginning a long process of clearing out my nan’s house, he brought home his equestrian trophies and rosettes, we did already know he was a keen horse rider, as well as a construction worker, as my father looked into his family history a quite a while ago. There was also a business directory of all the local public services and businesses, which did include my great grandfather’s construction company which was located next to one of the ...

8th May 1945 - Churchill announced Germany’s surrender marking Victory in Europe Day. ✌🏻 🇬🇧 8th May 2025 - marking the 80th anniversary of VE Day. I was so stuck for ideas of how I’ll celebrate whether that’ll be a living history object handling session or demonstration or hosting a tea or street party. I liked the idea of a wartime singalong karaoke session to overcome my vocal insecurities as an actor, but why not do a mini drag performance for my autism group with some costumed interpretation? The original idea was Home Guard or British Tommy, but finding a uniform was not only mega expensive, but also difficult to find the right size as the measurements of the outfits I looked at would be too big for me (surely there could be one out there equivalent to a modern day XS or S in men’s size or uniform designed to fit a teen boy soldier or a solider of a small build). I stumbled upon a Civil Defence ambulance women’s uniform, so I then had an idea of playing an air raid warden that ...