Sweet Smiles As Ice Cream Fan Win Celebrates 104th Birthday
One of the south’s oldest residents has celebrated her 104th birthday among well-wishers in a specially created ‘ice cream parlour’.
Win Clowery, who was a Land Girl in the Second World War, was naturally the centre of attention on the big day at Colten Care’s Poole care home The Aldbury.
Companionship Team members there granted her wish to have an ‘ice cream party’ by turning a lounge into a vintage-style parlour and donning stripey aprons, hats and red bowties to serve her.
A delighted Win then asked to join in the fun by wearing a bowtie herself as she enjoyed an ice.
As well as a sweet tooth, Win has had a lifelong passion for dance, especially the tango, so party guests were only too happy to take to the floor and show off their moves in front of her.
Win said her earliest memory is of going to church as a child and singing hymns.
The soundtrack to the life has also been informed by a fondness for classical music and singers such as Doris Day, Deana Durbin and Vera Lynn.
Beth Ford, a Companionship Team member at The Aldbury, said Win was non-committal when asked for the secret of longevity, but added: “Having had the pleasure of knowing Win for the past ten years, her love of jam sandwiches, salty chips and chocolate is unrivalled, so potentially that’s the answer. In any event, it was a pleasure and privilege to help make Win’s birthday wish come true and we all thoroughly enjoyed the celebration.”
When Win was born in London in autumn 1921, Britain was a nation still recovering from the devastation of the First World War and the global Spanish flu epidemic.
It was only three years after the long-running suffragettes’ campaign had finally changed the law to secure women’s voting rights.
Commercial air travel was in its infancy, cinemas still showed silent films and it would be several years before the first test transmission of a black and white BBC television signal.
Must-have children’s toys in 1921 included spinning tops, marbles and tiddlywinks.
