Take it easy to get to 100 (From Warrington Guardian)

Take it easy to get to 100

4:00pm Wednesday 13th February 2013 in News

IF you want to reach a grand old age, Elizabeth Bird believes you should just take it easy.

And considering she celebrated her landmark 100th birthday on Tuesday, the mum of three knows what she is talking about.

“She has never been stressed, she just takes everything in her stride,” said her son Harry, from Cinnamon Brow.

Born in Hale Street in 1913, life-long Warringtonian ‘Betty’ took the first steps down her career path at the tender age of 14, when she marched into the Cockhedge Cotton Factory and asked for work as a weaver.

Ignoring the foreman’s reply of ‘She’s no use, she’s too little’, Elizabeth started the first of many jobs she held until retiring aged 60, including work at the Post Office and at the old Borough Hospital as a kitchen assistant.

The great grandmother married husband of 50 years, Fred Bird, at St Ann’s Church in Orford in 1938 and had three children, Irene, aged 72 from Grappenhall, Fred, aged 71 from Orford, and 66-year-old Harry.

Even after celebrating with a surprise birthday party on Sunday, the grandmother of eight and great grandmother of 10, who lives at Ryfields Retirement village, still finds it funny to think she will be receiving her telegraph from the Queen this week.

Granddaughter Joanne Burns said: “She can’t believe she is 100, she keeps smiling and saying, ‘how on earth have I lived this long’.”