It’s not every day that one can channel one’s ancestors and relive a time gone by. But that is exactly what I did last night when a group of my friends and I converged on Holywell Lane in Shoreditch to get in the fighting spirit and do our bit for the war effort at the Blitz Party.
A wildly successful event (tickets always sell out right away so this was the first time I’d been able to snag one), the Blitz Party is put on every couple of months at the Village Underground, railway arches converted into a makeshift East End air raid shelter complete with sandbags, ration books and blackout curtains. Men were on leave from the Navy, RAF and Army, and girls donned their tea dresses and victory rolls (there were quite a few Rosie the Riveters, too) for a night of dancing to swing music and gin drinking. A live Big Band got the crowd dancing and in the intervals we were treated to The Andrews Sisters, Glenn Miller, Vera Lynn and more. The air raid reveling was a lot more fun than what people actually experienced during the Blitz, but aside from the constant threat of death by bombing, starvation and the whole war bit, there was something glamorous about the 1940s. The “make do and mend” attitude ensured that women never looked completely dull, even when clothes and essentials were hard to come by. Even Vivien Leigh had to make do with rationed goods. Laurence Olivier had to go to Paris to find nylon stockings for her in 1945. Most women didn’t have that luxury and had to rely on American GIs to provide the contraband.
