Doris Wakelin preparing to celebrate her 103rd birthday. Photo Sue NewmanDoris Wakelin lives by a pretty simple motto – get up, get on with it and never look back.

Today, she celebrates her 103rd birthday and said that, apart from good genes and good health, living to a ripe old age has plenty to do with your attitude to life.

“I’ve always believed that you have to forget the bad bits and remember the good and look forward to what’s coming.

“The good parts in life become your memories,” she said.

Doris is very much a child of the Ashburton District.

It’s been her home for all of those 103 years, it’s the place where she was raised, educated, married and raised a family and now it’s the place where she’s happily settled in a small flat, caring for herself, cooking her own meals and sharing time with her family.

Her family was part of an early Ashburton business, Moore’s drapery.

She attended Hampstead School (she’s proud of being the school’s oldest ex-pupil), and received her secondary education at Ashburton Technical College.

Like many girls of her time, she left school at 16 to take up housework positions with families with a new baby or where the mother had been hospitalised.

As one of a family of six and the oldest daughter, it was also her job to share the workload at home with her mother.

Unlike many of her friends, however, Doris had two homes, one with her family and one with her aunt.

“I’d been with Auntie Fan since I was born as we lived two streets apart and she’d often pick me up on a Friday night and take me back to Granny’s with her.

“I was her flower girl and when she married I moved in with her and her husband and her daughter was more like a sister to me,” she said.

That two home status also meant she came in for more than her fair share of spoiling, Doris admitted.

She met husband to be George Bishop through work.

“I didn’t normally work on Saturdays but this woman had just had a baby and asked if I’d go in and help out and her brother was there.”

The rest is history, but a history that shows the lengths a couple will go to for love.

“He used to ride 33 1/3rd miles every Saturday from the Ashburton Gorge down and back on Sunday night.

“If a nor’wester was blowing, he’d get off his bike and sleep under a gorse hedge,” Doris said.

“I’d be baking him a cake when he got here. He was fond of marshmallow square and I always made that for him.”

The cake clearly won George’s heart and the couple married and had six children.

Those child-raising years, living on farms around the district, were wonderful, Doris said and today she’s lost count of the number of great grandchildren and great great grandchildren that are part of her family.

George became ill and died in 1973 when Doris was in her early 50s.

“He was a great husband,” she said.

Lost without George by her side, Doris decided to get a job and started work at a supermarket in Ashburton’s Triangle.

Her job was to pack bags of flour.

Also working in the packing area was Wilfred Wakelin. His job was to prepare vegetables for sale.

Love bloomed and marriage followed.

Doris says she counts herself lucky to have had two ‘lovely’ men in her life.

Today, she’s still a member of Netherby Women’s Institute, first joining the organisation at Maronan in 1955.

She no longer knits and sews, but said in the past she enjoyed both crafts and was a dab hand at whipping up underwear for her grandchildren.

“I used to read a lot but gave that up because I’m not one to put a book down. I’d sit up until one or two in the morning reading, but today it’s television I enjoy, particularly The Chase.

“And I love doing puzzles.

“I buy a lot of magazines for the puzzles.”

Today she’s having an open home, welcoming visitors with cake and coffee and tonight she’ll head to the RSA for a celebratory shandy.

“That’s my only tipple and only on birthdays or at Christmas and it has to be a good one, a half and half.”

Staying true to her belief in looking to the future Doris is planning to celebrate her 105th birthday.

By Sue Newman © The Ashburton Guardian - 24 July 2020