Cambridgeshire woman celebrates 107th birthday

Eating her favourite breakfast cereal and refraining from alcohol and tobacco have helped a woman reach the age of 107, her daughter said.

Gladys Kightly is celebrating her birthday at a care home in Cambridgeshire with her loved ones.

Although she was "in poor health now", her daughter Sue said Gladys, who loved Weetabix, was still delivering meals on wheels in her 80s.

She said her mother's mantra had always been to "be kind and be happy".

"To the best of our knowledge, she's the oldest lady in Cambridgeshire," Sue Kightly told BBC Radio Cambridgeshire.

Her mother Gladys was born on 25 October 1916 in Prickwillow, near Ely, and lived for most of her life in the Cambridgeshire Fens.

Although Gladys moved to London to work as a nanny, she later returned to her home and "stayed close to her roots" from then, Ms Kightly said.

Gladys worked as a housekeeper for the local GP and then met her husband Stanley - a milkman - whom she married in 1940.

The couple had two children - Sue, now 74, and Janet, now 80.

Gladys lost her husband after 62 years of married life, but stayed active into her retirement, delivering meals to people 20 years her junior, and was riding her bicycle in her 80s.

Northamptonshire-produced breakfast cereal Weetabix "is her favourite thing in the whole world", Ms Kightly said.

She said that, together with refraining from alcohol and cigarettes was her mother's "accolade".

She added that they "gave her a liqueur chocolate once", but that did not go down well.

Although she lived at home with care until she was 100, Gladys is now a resident of Askham House, in Doddington, near March.

A birthday party with balloons, songs and a cake was being planned for her later, but Sue admitted: "She may be asleep."

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