by Sue Read

AT LEAST having a birthday on a day that does not exist for three years out of four means you can choose, or have more than one which is what Mrs Margaret Ware of Crediton has done this year.

Mrs Ware is 26 and a quarter but in real time celebrated her 105th birthday twice this week.

On Sunday she had a small party with some of her carers, then there was another in the week when family visited. Mrs Ware was born on February 29.

It is thought she is the oldest living leap year baby in the Westcountry, if not Britain. She was born and grew up in Lymington, Hampshire, one of a family of three boys and five girls.

She left school when she was 14, as was usual then, and went into service in a big house in Bournemouth with a day off a week. She was paid 10 shillings a week, 50p in today’s money.

She married John in Lymington. He worked at Southampton Airport and Mrs Ware remembers their house shaking when the airport was bombed, Southampton being a prime target.

“I never had a washing machine, I would put a big bucket on the gas stove to boil nappies.

“Sheets, everything were washed by hand but we did have a mangle. We never had carpets on the stairs, I didn’t have carpets when I was married, we had lino and I would polish the floors,” she said.

Mrs Ware was a partner in a new fish and chip shop in Lymington and worked in the “bottomside chippie” on the lower side of the High Street for a number of years after her move to Crediton after the death of her husband in the 1980s.

Mrs Ware remembers that at the Lymington chippie she used to do battered potatoes, selling them five for one shilling (10p today).

She and John had a son, John who lives in Bournemouth, and two daughters, Valerie who is in Norfolk and Sylvia who lives in Cornwall.

Mrs Ware has five grandchildren and seven great grandchildren. Until recent times she was often out catching a bus to other parts of Devon, and still goes out when she can.

She keeps up with current affairs, her hearing is good, and she has a sparkle that belies her 105 years. She says she doesn’t feel 105 either and always enjoys a good laugh.

“I have had a hard life but I have enjoyed it,” she says. “It is no good being miserable.”