Bognor resident to mark 100th birthday - 'a century of memories'

Friends know him simply as Dave and his achievement places him in a very rare group.

Only one in every four thousand people in the UK is a man over one hundred, and women outnumber men at this age by five to one. Even with today’s longer lifespans Dave’s story stands out.

Born in Lambeth on 3 December 1925, Dave grew up in Warren Road in Cricklewood at a time when the North Circular Road was just being completed. Local manufacturing was thriving with firms such as Staples Mattresses and Bentley.

His father Richard worked at Peter Robinson, the Oxford Circus department store, while his mother Adelaide kept the family home running.

His school days took him across Neasden and Willesden at Wykeham Primary School and Pound Lane. The daily journey was very different to today. It meant a two mile walk each morning and a penny from his mother for the bus ride home.

Dave was evacuated during the early years of the Second World War. Along with three other children he was sent to Berkhamsted when he was around thirteen.

Bombs later fell near Warren Street in Cricklewood in 1940 so the move came at the right time. He remembers stew on the table and weekend treats at the cinema where two pennies bought chocolate.

Back in Cricklewood his father helped him secure a job at a local electrical company. His time there was brief. At sixteen he joined the General Post Office as a trainee engineer working on the North West London Telephone Exchange.

He stayed there throughout its transition into British Telecom. After forty seven years he retired in August 1988 and later moved to Aldwick in Bognor Regis in June 1996.

His engineering work took him across telephone exchanges and into underground cabling. Travel became part of his routine along with a lifelong love of cycling. His parents gave him his first bike at eleven. He never learned to drive so he kept pedalling well into his seventies.

He often cycled from Aldwick to Bognor Railway Station to get the train to London Victoria before heading to White Hart Lane to see Tottenham Hotspur.

Football has been a thread running through his life. His first big match came at sixteen when he and a friend travelled to see Spurs play Arsenal.

He recalls names such as Johnny Morrison, Bill Nicholson and Alf Ramsey and later the era of Jimmy Greaves and Danny Blanchflower.

He reached his own sporting peak as a fan during the 1966 World Cup at Wembley. Alf Ramsey led England to victory that year while Greaves missed out on the final squad.

Today Sir Geoff Hurst of West Ham is the only surviving member of that famous team.

At twenty one Dave was called up for National Service in 1946. He trained with the Fleet Air Arm at HMS Gosling in Warrington and later at RNAS Brawdy in Pembrokeshire.

He became a Naval Fleet Air Arm electrician and spent much of his service at RNAS Culdrose near Helston. He never served at sea. Looking back he says it was something that had to be done so he made the most of it.

Cycling was never far away.

By 1950, he was a member of the Crouch Hill Cycling Club. Founded in 1880, it was a respected club and Dave served as both Secretary and magazine editor. When the club folded in the late 1960s, he delivered the records by bike to a location near Cambridge University. The archives are now preserved in the National Cycling Museum. His rides included a one-hundred-mile trip from Cricklewood to Manchester and an eight-hundred-mile holiday to the Pyrenees which took him two weeks.

He still follows the major races on television and enjoyed this year’s Tour de France on his new fifty-five-inch screen.

Even at ninety nine he was not too old to have Wi-Fi installed at home.

Dave married Sheila in 1954. They loved walking and visiting the pub for lunch. Sheila was a passionate gardener and they shared sixty five years of marriage.

She died in 2019 after twenty-three years living in Bognor Regis with Dave.

He still remembers her fondly as he looks back on a century filled with change.

As he celebrates his hundredth birthday this week his neighbours will be joining him in marking a life that has spanned historic events, sporting triumphs and countless personal memories.