Chrissie celebrates her century with tea and cake

"Oooh, the press. I better watch what I say," exclaimed 100 years young Chrissie Clarke yesterday as photographers snapped, reporters scribbled and the Lord Mayor of Dublin came to tea.

Mrs Clarke actually celebrated her 100th birthday on July 7th but, for various reasons, the Lord Mayor, Ms Mary Freehill, was unable to present her with a congratulatory scroll at Our Lady's Manor Nursing Home in Dalkey, Co Dublin, until yesterday.

She'd take a sherry, but she wouldn't take a pint, the doughty centenarian confided in Ms Free hill. Yesterday it was tea and madeira cake all round. The nuns served while four generations chatted with the birthday girl.

Born in Glasthule, she moved to London in 1920. Though already engaged - twice - her eyes lit on a policeman from Durham named Colin, whom she would see each morning in Battersea.

"He used to hold up the traffic for me," she laughed. "I'd nearly be boiling I'd blush so much, and he used to call the other policeman to have a look at me blushing." A sudden return to Ireland to look after her father and brothers in the late 20s was followed by a trip back to London in 1940. Colin had married since, though his wife had died, and he and Chrissie married in 1941.

"Oooh, he was tops," recalled a beaming Chrissie yesterday. Colin died eight years ago in the nursing home where the couple had lived since 1990. They had no children, though Colin had a son, Eric, who lives still in England and who visits once a year. He was there for her 100th birthday party in the Killiney Court Hotel in July.

There yesterday were nieces and nephews, grand-nieces and grandnephews, and great grand-nieces . . . Her aim is to make it to January 2000, "so I can say I have lived in three centuries".

Reassuringly, she undertook to let this reporter know how she has got on by then.