A WOMAN who once owned a motorbike and a pet monkey has celebrated her centenary with a party, attended by 48 members of her family.

Vera Barnard, of Chase Road, Southgate, was born in Portsmouth where her father served in the Navy, and moved to Chetnole in Dorset when she was 14, when he retired.

Her parents bought a pub and were comfortably off, giving Vera, her older brother Fred and younger brother Cyril a happy and carefree childhood, alongside their pet monkey.

When a teenager, she played the organ in her local church and from the age of 16 rode a motorbike to work six days a week in a department store in Sherborne, seven miles away.

She said working conditions were very different in the 1920s.

“I worked as a shop assistant and we weren't allowed to speak to one another, only if we were working in the store room could we get away with it because nobody could hear us. The owner used to sit in her office above the shop floor and tap on the window if she saw us talking.

“We knew they were watching us all the time so we didn't dare do anything.”

Vera soon moved on to another store in Yeovil, Somerset, which was so far she had to abandon her bike and get the train to work.

It was not until 1933 that she met her husband-to-be at a dance in Chetnole.

Ted Barnard was from Somerset and she did not expect to see him again but to her surprise he was waiting for her the very next day at the station when she returned home from work.

They got married in 1936 and moved to flats in Fox Lane, then Osborne Road, Palmers Green, where Mr Barnard had already been working for some time as a cinema projector. When their eldest daughter Maureen was born a year later he moved to work as bus conductor, and eventually a driver on the 43 to London Bridge. Joan was born in 1938.

“He was really quiet and worked really hard, he worked in the evenings too doing gardening.

“We didn't go out much, before I was married I used to go to dances but I was only married 12 months before I got pregnant. We did enjoy playing cards at home with our neighbours,” she said.

When war broke out Mr Barnard sent his family back to Chetnole.

But Hitler did not scare Mrs Barnard, she soon came back, securing a new council house in Reservoir Road, Oakwood, then in Middlesex and bringing the girls back.

“It was the same as any other time except you had to go into the shelters at night,” she said. “I don't remember being scared I don't think the young ones were scared, we didn't realise.

“It was very different here, very quiet. Southgate only had two shops here a butchers and a paper shop that sold a lot of different things.”

She has lived in the same house for 50 years with the help of visiting carers and her family. Her husband died just one year after retiring, in 1969 and she has been alone ever since.

She has seven grandchildren, 17 great grandchildren and five great great grandchildren.

“I've had a good life I should say,” she said. “But after 30 years I still miss my husband “Nobody could take his place.”

As for why she has lived so long, she simply said it was not yet her time to go.