A “YOUNG at heart” 101-year-old has been celebrating her birthday.

Ivy Brooks, from Launton near Bicester, reached the milestone yesterday and enjoyed the day with a lunch with her family, who live next door.

The pensioner, nee Massey, had a busy life, living everywhere from fire stations to a boat, but put her longevity down to a long and happy marriage with husband Arthur Brooks, who died aged 91 just before their 70th anniversary.

Daughter Lynne Harper said: “My mother is young at heart. Although she has limited sight she still takes interest in what she wears.

“My daughter is actually getting married in January and my mother is keen to know what she will wear.

“She is very family orientated. Her family is her main concern.”

Mrs Brooks met husband Arthur in September 1939 when they both worked in the London Fire Brigade. The young office girl asked her husband-to-be for directions to their office at Dockhead Fire Station and it was then that “he decided he quite fancied her”, according to Mrs Brooks.

The couple lived in London throughout the Second World War and both experienced their homes being bombed out. They married in 1941 in Croydon but did not move into their own family home until 1945.

Mrs Brooks worked with the London Fire Brigade until 1942 when the couple had their first daughter Lynne.

Mrs Brooks said: “We lived in fire stations, the last being the HQ in Lambeth, and when my father retired in 1973 he was deputy assistant chief officer of the London Fire Brigade.

“My parents had a long retirement and did quite a bit of sailing as father had a boat in Blackwater, Essex.

“They then moved up here in 1997 to be near the family and the house next to us happened to be for sale so they moved in next door.”

Mrs Brooks also worked as an office girl at Westminster City Council and at Prudential Insurance in Reading.

The couple had two daughters, Glynis Jenkinson, 66, and Lynne Harper, 73, granddaughter Annabel Robinson, 37, grandsons Luke Jenkinson, 35, Ross Jenkinson, 26, and great-granddaughter Harriet Robinson, five, known as Hattie.