Elsie Lancaster is 100 years old today.

She says she has broken the family mold by becoming a centenarian.

"I come from a very short lived family" she noted.

She must be a throw back or maybe a throw forward, or even a changeling, because you certainly could not call her short lived.

Congratulations, Elsie!

Elsie was born in Burnley, Lancashire, England, the last girl in a family of seven children, three girls and four boys.

"l like big families," she says.

Growing up in the hurly burly of a family of seven, Elsie feels she got to understand males better.

From her observations she says she finds that men are much vainer than women. (Any comments, gentlemen?)

Elsie went to school from age five to 13.

The school she attended was for girls and boys, but had separate playgrounds.

Elsie recalls her school days were happy times.

After she left school, she attended night school and furthered her education in dressmaking, millinery, English and gymnastics.

"Going out and mixing with people and learning", she recalls, "you are never too old to learn. I'm learning a lot here", she twinkles.

Lancashire is famous for its cotton mills, and Elsie got a job in a mill tending four cotton weaving looms.

Mostly the looms wove fine white material especially for turbans.

At aged 16 Elsie met William Lancaster at a concert in the park to which she had gone with a girlfriend.

William was also a cotton weaver in the village of Harle Syke, a halfpenny tram ride away.

Elsie recalls that Harle Syke was one of the wealthiest villages in the world all because of the cotton weaving trade.

The villagers of Harle Syke owned their own mill.

William and Elsie kept in touch over the years, taking walks together.

They courted for six years.

"There was always something to do" recalls Elsie - "we entertained ourselves."

Aged 22, Elsie married William at the local Methodist Chapel.

It was a quiet wedding (Elsie's father had died not long before). Elsie wore a pale mauve dress with an accordion pleated cape.

The happy couple spent their honeymoon in Blackpool on the English coast.

"That was before they built the famous illuminations", recalls Elsie.

Back in 1924 everyone was emigrating. Elsie and Williams decided to emigrate too.

"Oh, to be in Bermuda, red roses at Christmas" said a friend, so Elsie and William set off for Bermuda via Canada on the good ship Chigecto.

"Go to Bermuda!

"You'll never make a fortune, but you'll make a living," they said back then.

William took to house painting and when the Second World War came, he became the grocery manager for the NAAFI at Prospect.

Elsie meanwhile became a full-time mother and housewife, with one girl and two boys to rear.

When her daughter was 14, Elsie went to work at the Woman's Shop in the dress department.

Her night school dressmaking came in handy when fitting dresses.

She worked for Gibbons Company for about ten years.

She then worked for 17 years for the Blind Shop at the KEMH, selling minerals, candies and cigarettes to make money to help the blind.

Elsie says she is a "people person", but likes her own company too.

She used to love to read and enjoyed making soft furnishings for her home and clothes for her family, even pants for William.

She used to ride a mobylette until she was 76, and played tennis at Admiralty House in the summer when the admiral was away.

William was interested in everything around the house.

"Nothing went undone", recalls Elsie.

Between them they must have made a good pair.

Elsie has been a widow for 18 years.

It came as a bit of a shock when she had to move.

Coming to Westmeath just happened automatically, she remembers.

"Apart from home, it's the next best thing," she smiles.