After a lifetime of hard work and new challenges, Timaru woman Peg Watson is celebrating her century.
Mrs Watson turned 100 years old on Monday , and took time to reflect on a life well lived.
Mrs Watson said she had always been an active and independent person, involved with sports over the years and growing up on a dairy farm.
She was the last born in her dairy-farming family and an unexpected twin girl.
Her family had a Victorian attitude to family discipline.
‘‘Like sitting up straight and to not drop the ‘g’s off of our words.
‘‘In retrospect, I now appreciate good English.’’
Mrs Watson said she enjoyed her school days at Te Awa — north of Temuka — and working on the dairy farm before and after school.
Along with her siblings, she was taught to milk the herd by hand as there was no electricity then.
‘‘Dairy farming taught me to work, and it was hard work.
‘‘There was noalternative. We had to do it and we grew strong in our limbs because of it.’’
She won the Barclay Scholarship when she was in school which she said was a wonderful surprise and she hoped to attend secondary school and train to be a teacher.
‘‘But due to the lack of a school bus system, it was an impossible hurdle for my parents to cope with.
‘‘So their decision then was that there would be no more school for my twin and I.’’
However, they were both taught how to play the piano as a teacher would come round to them every week for lessons.
‘‘Music has always been a very big interest of mine. I only played party music and I played it from memory.’’
She said during the war there were many social functions for people who were leaving, people arriving and those getting married.
‘‘They were low-key but the piano was a part of your social life.’’
In the 1930s Mrs Watson said electricity came to the area and the dairy farm became more modern.
She remained on the farm until 1946 as she and the other girls became unofficial land girls during World War 2.
During this time she met her future husband at a Presbyterian-Anglican parish evening. He was 18, and she was 20.
‘‘Keith Watson and I married in 1946 and we had two sons and two daughters.
‘‘Keith had spent many years working out at Pleasant Point but he decided he wanted to set up his own building business.’’
The couple moved to Winchester in 1953 and she became involved with the school committee, which asked if she would consider taking on a young teacher as a boarder as it was compulsory then for them to do two years of country teaching.
‘‘I had a new house and extra room, so I committed myself to making a home away from home for many young teachers. They remain my very dear friends and I receive long letters of their own family’s achievements.’’
A move to Timaru in 1974 saw Mrs Watson able to become involved with sport, picking up both golf and bowls.
‘‘I was able to win the intermediate championship twice at the Gleniti Golf Club and was able to get a hole-in-one when I played.’’
Mrs Watson said she had always enjoyed baking and reading as well as gardening which she found rewarding.
She does a code-cracker puzzle every day and keeps up to date with sports and world affairs.
‘‘My rule is make yourself pleasant and people will respond.
‘‘I have had an interesting life but you make the best of things in life and just get on with it.’’
