Passage One

I was only eight years old when the Second World War ended, but I can still remember something about the victory celebrations in the small town where I lived on the day when the war in Europe ended. We had not suffered much from the war there. But both at home and at school I had become accustomed to the phrases “before the war” and “when the war’s over”. “Before the war”, apparently, things had been better, though I was too young to understand why, except that there had been no bombs then, and people had eaten things like ice-cream and bananas, which I had only heard of. When the war was over we would go back to London, but this meant little to me. I did not remember what London was like.

    What I remember now about VE (Victory in Europe) Day was the May evening. After dinner I said I wanted to see the bonfire(大火堆), so when it got dark my father took me to the end of the street. The bonfire was very high, and somehow people had collected some old clothes to dress the unmistakable figure (人形) with the moustache they had to put on top of it. Just as we arrived, they set light to it. The flames rose and soon swallowed ( 吞噬) the “guy”. Everyone was cheering and shouting, and an old woman came out of her house with two chairs and threw them on the fire to keep it going.

I stood beside my father until the fire started to go down, not knowing what to say. He said nothing, either. He had fought in the First World War and may have been remembering the end of that. At last he said, “Well, that’s it, son. Let’s hope that this time it really will be the last one.”

 Where did the author live before the Second World War?