Hayling Island woman who has spent a lifetime caring for others feels 'lucky' to reach 100th birthday

Audrey Stein, who was born in Alverstoke, Gosport, in 1923 and now lives on Hayling Island, will celebrate the momentous occasion with family and friends on Monday, May 1.

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Speaking ahead of her centennial celebration, Audrey said: ‘I’m very lucky because I can walk and talk and do all my own shopping.’

Alongside luck, Audrey put her good health over the years down to ‘syrup of figs every Friday night’, which her brother Norman explained is a family joke stepping from regularly being given the health supplement as children.

Audrey has spent her life caring for other people and got her first job – working as an ‘undernanny’ for the aristocratic Roe family – after leaving school at the age of 14. In this role, she was responsible for caring for an heir to the family fortune and instilling aristocratic values into them. For much of her career, Audrey ran a medical practice in Elland in the midlands with her late husband David Stein, who was a doctor from Scotland.

Audrey’s brother Norman March, 92, said: ‘She’s spent all of her life caring for people in one way or another. In the first place, she was the eldest sibling of four and from my recollection she was obvioulsy the example to all of us. In a way, she started taking care of us at an early age.

‘She came from a house that had one cold tap and just a basin in the kitchen – there was no bathroom, we had a tin bath on the wall – and was transferred into this luxurious house. It must have been operatic, the scale the decor, the meals, the servants, the chandeliers instead of lampshades.

‘These were the people who were the judges of the day, they wrote the laws, they carried them out – these were the decision makers. She told me they were all treated equally. It was a very happy scene for four years.’

Following this formative role, which Norman explained has made Audrey an excellent hostess, she went on to become a nurse in the Second World War and her training began around the time of D-Day.

Norman added: ‘The invasion came and all these trains and lorries arrived at Winchester Hospital with all the injured. From then on, it was non-stop. She eventually ended up as a staff nurse which was great because by the time she was 25, she’d learned everything in life.

‘Take her name; she was Audrey Irene March – her initials spell aim and that’s her. Direct and hits the target. She’s a marvellous lady.’

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The 99-year-old still lives fairly independently – walking with the help of a zimmer frame – and only gave up driving last year at the insistance of her brother.

The day before her birthday, Audrey will meet with 26 friends and loved ones at Hayling Golf Club to enjoy a meal and a ‘marvellous vista of the Solent.’ The big day itself will be involve lunch with her brother and a close friend.