I am 111 years old but
ONE birthday card stands out among the 40 or more adorning Grace Jones’s apartment in a lovely Cotswolds village. On the cover is a beautiful picture of the Queen with a beaming smile and inside is a special message that reads: “How splendid to know that you are celebrating your one hundred and eleventh birthday on 16th September, 2017! Please accept my best wishes for a very happy occasion.” It is signed Elizabeth R.
So how does it feel to be 111? Grace’s blue eyes twinkle and her smile grows wide as she declares: “Actually I don’t feel any older than when I was 65. I have my little drop of whisky every night with water – and that keeps me going.
Indeed she reckons her regular dram of Famous Grouse is what explains her extraordinary longevity. She started having it years ago on the advice of a surgeon. “A few years ago he said, ‘I hope you put a little water in it now you’re getting older’. I never drink during the day and never drink wine but I never miss that whisky in the evening.”
And it clearly works. “I don’t feel any different at 111 to the way I did when I was 101, 91 or 81. I get about, I can talk, I’ve got no aches or pains, I keep very well, I never worry.
“It was a very special moment when I reached 100 and got a message from the Queen – and I have had a since then!”
Meeting Grace, who is Britain’s sixth oldest person, is a fascinating experience because it’s like leafing through the pages of a history book. Born in Liverpool in 1906 she has lived under five monarchs and 21 prime ministers – and her memory is still pin-sharp.
Even though she lot more from has her moved around the country, living in 27 different houses, her soft Liverpool accent is easily detectable as I ask her if she can still remember when she was a little girl.
“Oh yes, we lived in Bootle,” she says. “I remember the First World War starting when I was about eight. At the time my brother Thomas was in Australia and he wrote home to my father to say it was his duty to join up but unfortunately he was killed. He was the only brother I had – I had three sisters though. He was a nice brother but that was life, really.
“I remember seeing all the soldiers going off on the trains to France. Sometimes my parents would take me down into Liverpool to see the men on the crowded platforms at Lime Street station with their kitbags. It must have been times for their families.”
In time, the war ended, life moved on and Grace found a new hobby. “I loved dancing when I was a teenager,” she says. “We had a very good dancing teacher at the college I went to and I used to come home full of it. If we went to a panto at Christmas I used to say, ‘Ooh, I’d love to be on the stage’ but my terrible