Hetty Bower, 106 (left), and Peggy Megarry, 100, discuss the ups and downs of life as a centenarian. Photograph: Felix Clay for the Guardian
The BBC's John Simpson hit the headlines this week after saying he would prefer to take his own life than face serious illness in old age. The 67-year-old foreign correspondent is taking part in a new BBC series looking at the lives of older people. But what about very old people? There are 12,000 people in the UK over 100, a number set to rise as medicine advances. What is the reality of an 11th decade? Hetty Bower, 106, and Peggy Megarry, 100, live in the same residential care home. They talk to Susanna Rustin.
Susanna Rustin: Did you ever imagine living so long?
Hetty Bower: Good gracious, no! I come from a very large family – I had seven sisters so we were eight girls, and two brothers. All of them but me have gone. I wasn't the youngest, so why it is I don't know. My mother was a seventh child and I am my mother's seventh child, so I'm the seventh child of a seventh child. But I don't feel lucky, no I don't, although I was fortunate in having parents who loved each other.
SR: What is life like here?
Peggy Megarry: Well, in the morning you hope someone will arrive to put your stockings on, and your bedroom slippers, and they take you to the loo and after that you wash, they help you, and after that you have breakfast, which is brought to me in my room I'm glad to say. I don't enjoy group meals, there's a lot of chatter. I try to get out every afternoon because one tends to put on weight here with the diet.
SR: Do you enjoy your food?
HB: I wouldn't say I enjoy it. I eat because it's necessary. You get hungry if you don't eat and that's not pleasant. But I can't say I long for my meals – no, not now.
SR: Do you think often about the past?
PM: Oh yes, at night in bed I think of chunks of the past, a long way back. It depends what my mind is centred on, but there are plenty of memories. I had an amah [nanny], you see, in China; she looked after me and we all loved our amahs more than our mothers. Friends who grew up in China all say that.
SR: Is it hard work staying cheerful?
HB: Oh crumbs, it never occurs to me to think if it's hard work. I just think it wouldn't be very pleasant to go around with a [pulls a sour face]. One likes to be pleasant for other people to look at, so I do tend to sometimes look like a Cheshire cat. But once you make real friends, people you can discuss things with – books, music – you're knitting a life, and I've done that with many people who are now no longer alive, and you miss your friends once they go. I have very few people now who were here when I came, or who came soon after me. On the other hand, there are a few people who came because I'm here, because it's nice for them to know someone.
SR: Do you hope to live much longer?
HB: No, I do not. I really hope I don't make another birthday. There doesn't seem much purpose. I know that Margaret and her sister Celia could live fuller lives if I wasn't here.
Source: The Guardian
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