Portsmouth's Dorothy Aslett celebrates her 104th birthday and says the secret is to be happy

Dorothy Aslett celebrated her 104th birthday on February 3 at Cosham Court Nursing Home alongside her sister, Kim Aslett, four of her great-grandchildren, two granddaughters and a daughter-in-law who Dorothy considers ‘one of her own’.

Staff at the home laid on a buffet for the centenarian and cooked a birthday cake for her special day.

‘It was very nice,’ says Dorothy, ‘and very long,’ she adds chuckling.

Charisma Williams, registered home manager, said: ‘We put it on especially for her, 104! It was a busy day for her. She didn't really expect it, we put up a 104 balloon and she was crying!

‘She was so thankful, she was really overwhelmed,’ she adds.

Her granddaughter, Samantha Lloyd, adds: ‘She’s always been the type of person who would do everything for anyone else, and as she’s got older people have started to do it for her.’

Born in 1919, the youngest in a family of eight, Dorothy grew up in Portsea with her parents, John and Ada Gigg, one brother and six sisters and had a happy childhood.

‘I’m Portsmouth bred and born darling, always,’ Dorothy adds affectionately.

‘I was born on Jacob’s Street, a very old road now. My dad had curly hair,’ she reminisces. ‘They called him curly, that’s who I took after!’

As a young girl, she attended Arundel Street School and always came top of the class, before starting her first job at Twilfit Corset Factory in Old Portsmouth.

When she was 17, it was through a work colleague that Dorothy met ‘the love of her life,’ Alfred Aslett.

The happy couple tied the knot in April 1939 at St Mary’s Church, in Fratton, and were together for 63 years until Alfred died in 2002.

In a treasured newspaper cutting saved by the now 104-year-old, the couple appeared in the Portsmouth Evening News, celebrating their golden anniversary.

In the article, Dorothy’s husband ‘Alf’ recalls the day they fell in love on a ‘bicycle built for two.’

He said: ‘I saw Dorothy at my oldest sister’s wedding, and fancied her straight away - I chatted her up while I was giving her a lift on the bar of my bike.’

Four years after the war broke out, Dorothy and Alfred had their only son, John, and the family lived at Cyprus Road, Portsea, where they lived for 40 years.

Tragically, Dorothy lost her son John in a motorbike accident when he was 55.

She says: ‘Everybody knew my boy, because he was a motorbiker and a very good archer - he was a master archer!’

Dorothy’s close-knit family who describe her as their ‘rock’ say she is the glue who holds everyone together.

Samantha says: ‘She loved it [in Portsmouth], all her sisters lived nearby. We were all really close, we used to go round every Sunday and she just used to feed us, she’s a fantastic cook!’

‘She’s always been very caring, she was always making dinners for the street,’ recalls Samantha. ‘She used to look after her next door neighbour and they would pass trifle back over.

‘Her husband Alfred was the loveliest man you could ever imagine,’ she adds.

When The News reported on her 100th birthday four years ago, Dorothy, who was once a keen cyclist and esteemed darts player, vowed to learn something new each day, and to this day she feels the same.

‘My mind is still young,’ she says, ‘but my body is catching up to me.’

‘Everybody asks me what’s the secret, there’s no secret, I had a happy marriage, and we had a very happy life,’ she adds simply.