It's many, many, many happy returns for twin sisters Elma and Thelma who celebrate their 103rd birthdays tomorrow.
The two Stockport sisters are set to reach this phenomenal milestone in style with a surprise bash laid on by family but when asked if they are looking forward to their birthday fun-loving Thelma shrugs and says: "Not really, it's just another day."
After celebrating so many birthdays Thelma would be forgiven for being nonchalant, but it's not many people who reach the grand of old age of 103, something I tell her a few times until she laughs: "OK, stop reminding me, stop rubbing it in."
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Witty and warm, Thelma and Elma are funny and on the ball, "I just do as I am told," Thelma tells me, before winking conspiritorially and whispering: "Or so they think."
Born in Cheadle Heath in Stockport on August 3, 1919, Thelma and Elma Edwards went to Alexandra Park Primary School and talk of humble beginnings. Aged not much older than eight, the girls would go down to the railway lines with their older brother Robert to look for loose coal that may have fallen off trains, so they could light the fire. "We didn't have much, we were very poor," they say.
But they recall fun times, playing out on the streets and being mischevious. "We would be out on the streets being naughty," Thelma remembers. "I was the most naughty," confesses Elma, "We would knock on doors and run off."
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Aged just 14-years-old, the sisters, who had three other siblings, took jobs as packers and labellers of Smiths crisps, after enquiring after vacancies there on the way home from school. They remained there until they married and gave up work - just three months apart from each other, both aged 21.
Elma married Bill Hewitt, a joiner and Thelma married Joseph Barratt, a hatter, just as the war started. Elma recalls seeing the city burning red from the bombing. "We once came back from a do with the girls and the whole of Manchester was red with the bombs," she says.
Both women watched their husbands go off to war, and talk of desperately dark times: "We didn't see them for a couple of years," they told me. "We used to go and sleep in the caves at Brinksway when the air raids took place."
Thelma's husband was captured in Italy and became a prisoner of war at the same camp as Group Captain Sir Douglas Bader, famed for losing his legs while attempting some aerobatics, "It was terrible," Elma says.
In 1959 Thelma and Joe became the landlord and landlady of The New Inn on Wellington Road in Stockport, but left when their son Tony, now 63, was a few months old. Tony remembers his dad bringing home lots of amazing hats and he and his friends loving to see them."
My dad brought home cowboy hats and police hats," he says. "Friends would come round and we would love to look at them all."
Asked what was the downside of being a twin, the sisters say it was being forced to dress in the same clothes when they were growing up, but the best bit, they say, was always having one another for company. "You didn't need pals," Elma says, "We always had each other."
As Thelma now lives in Kirkham, and Elma still lives in Stockport the twins say they don't get to spend as much time together now, but still speak on the phone once a week - catching up and finding out "who has had a baby, who has done what and who hasn't" and when they get together still enjoy trips to the seaside and days out.
Elma, who has had two children, five grandchildren and six great grandchildren, says the secret to her longevity is a drop of brandy. "I like a drink," she says, whereas Thelma, who has had two children, five grandchildren and five great grandchildren says: "I like my food." Elma also says "Keep smiling, don't worry."
"I sometimes say to Elma, did you ever think we would get to this age?" says Thelma, looking incredulous, "I mean.....we are getting on a bit."
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