Esther McVey: 100 not out for a very special birthday – and what could be in store for the next 100 years

Apr 4 2012 Heswall News

ON Sunday I went to Dr Norman Mawby's 100th Birthday, a much-loved local gentleman whose house was abuzz with family, friends and neighbours all wishing him well.

I arrived in time for the cutting of the birthday cake and Rev Dennis Kelly performing the birthday toast.

The Queen's birthday card was on the mantelpiece along with literally hundreds of others. One had written on it “100 Not Out” which made me chuckle.

And Norman certainly wasn't “out”. Standing in the hall in his smoking jacket, playing host, he confided how things had changed quite a bit since he was born on April 1, 1912, two weeks before the Titanic sank, two years before the First World War and when George V was on the throne.

The things he'd seen and lived through: both world wars, women getting the vote, this first female MP and the first female Prime Minister, the Great Depression, television being invented, computers, the Internet and the BBC, not to mention the founding of the NHS.

He knew Selwyn Lloyd MP well; David Hunt MP too and here was I now, all these years later, supping a birthday drink with him reminiscing about such huge changes.

What's in store for the next 100 years, who knows, but working with local schools and businesses we can only hope for a positive future.

The change in energy supply could mean significant development for Cammell Lairds and local green businesses and the change in the world shipping routes could place Liverpool and Wirral as a major port once again.