So my great grandmother was 100 yesterday...

For serious.

Unbelievably awesome.

Let's consider this for a moment. My nan was born the same year the Titanic sank. She was born when movies were silent, you could buy a car in any colour as long as it was black and great empires spanned the globe. Had she been old enough, my nan wouldn't have been allowed to vote. She was born in a Britain that used an utterly different type of currency to what we're used to, consisting not only of pennies and pounds, but farthings, shillings, and crowns. If you wanted to make a phone call, you might do so on something like this. Nobody knew what a world war was, let alone that there might be two of them. If you wanted to visit the other side of the world, you'd need to take a boat. If you wanted to write to somebody on the other side of the world, your letter would probably be on that same boat. You might be lucky if you got a reply within a few weeks, if not months. 

Instead of trash:

Jersey Shore - nobody in 1912 could have imagined such horror.  Source.

You had class:

Windsor Shore - following a morning of croquet, the reality stars then retired for a lunch of tea and crumpets.  Source.

There was no internet, there were no mobile phones, instead you had a global telegram network. Tweet, blog and frape weren't words, they were noises. 

On Tuesday, she joined the estimated 455,000 (according to Wikipedia) other centenarians around the globe.

One of the great things about having a centennial nan is that she is a treasure trove of tales, some of them epic and unimaginable to my age group, some small and familiar. Here are just a few:

We all call her nana Lou, but when she was little she was called Louisa. The boys would tease her and sing 'Louisa Louisa, we're going to hug and squeeze her', so she started calling herself Louise. But the boys just sang 'Louise, Louise, we're still gonna give you a hug and squeeze!' What you have to appreciate, is that prior to the 1960's, talk like this was just as outrageous as showing your bum to the queen.

During World War 2, her children were evacuated to Derby (find a map - it's a long way from Southend), and like countless other parents, she suffered the heartache and insecurity that it brought. Luckily, she was able to visit her children throughout the war - this sadly wasn't always the case for evacuee children.

While the war was ongoing, she worked in a restaurant by day, while at night, she was enlisted as an ARP (Air Raid Precaution) officer, ensuring everybody adhered to total blackouts so that they wouldn't be targeted for German bombing raids. My great granddad also worked as an ARP. One of the stories my nan told involved him going to a house where a bomb had fallen. It hadn't exploded, but instead fell through the roof and wedged itself into the stairs. My granddad arrived to find the owner of the house trying to remove the bomb - by hitting it with a hammer. My nan told me about another occasion when, during an air raid, she was found hiding under a bed by my great granddad, with her feet sticking out the end. Despite the planes flying overhead and everything going on around them, they were able to see the funny side of moments like that.

My dad told me once, years later when the war was over, that they were all out in my great granddads Mini, with my nan sat in the back seat behind my granddad who was driving. The accelerator got stuck and my nan thought my granddad was just driving too fast, so she started whacking him round the back of the head and told him off for his 'reckless' driving. Luckily that situation came to a safe end and is a brilliant example of real life slapstick comedy.

So here's to you nan - a truly remarkable achievement, and I'm honoured to have such an awesome great grandmother!