Centenarian has no regrets

Press, 20 November 1982, Page 3

Centenarian has no regrets

Remaining single has brought no regrets for a centenarian. Miss Margaret McKinlay. Miss McKinlay. a well known senior citizen of Kaiapoi, will be 100 tomorrow. The occasion will be marked by a birthday party to be held on Monday at Christchurch’s Nurse Maude Hospital, where she has lived for the last three years.

“I don’t regret not marrying,” said a sprightly Miss McKenlay, who does not look a day over 80. “I have seen good marriages and bad marriages, and'-1 just feel that I am content with my position.” The law gave more protection for women than it used to, but even now some “terrible things” went on between married couples, she said, referring to the problems of battered women. “i hear of this and I hear of that, and I just feel I haven’t missed much,” said Miss McKinlay. Mrs Joan Duffey, matron of the hospital, said that Miss McKinlay had said there had been a suitor, but in those days marriage was in strict order of age, and her elder sister, Mary, had not married. Miss Mary McKinlay died two years ago, aged 101. The two sisters were born in Kilmarnock, Scotland.

Miss Margaret Mckinlay still has her soft Scottish accent. She joined her sister in New Zealand in 1920, and settled in Kaiapoi, where she

worked in the woollen mills knotting and darning the fabric that was woven there. What is the secret of Miss McKinlay’s longevity? she

says that she does not know but that she has always been healthy. “I have led a quiet life, but I had to rise early and work hard.” she said. “We had our mother with us and she had to be looked after. She lived for 17 years after we came out from Scotland,” she said.

Miss McKinlay has good news for non-joggers: she did not take part in sport. However, she and her sister were very good at knitting and crocket, and made all their own stockings, gloves, and woollen skirts, she said.

Thinking back on her early days in Scotland, Miss McKinlay recalled how she and other children used to follow the lamplighter from post to post and the Salvation Army with its cornets and trombones and young women with tambourines. She remembered the or-gan-grinder’s monkey and the tricks of the bear-tamer’s big, black beast. What of her present life? “I just have to take each day as it comes,” she said. “I am living among people who are coming and going, and some are better adaped to old age than others.” Her hearing and sight had deteriorated, but she was good on her feet and still walked to the Merivale shopping centre on her own.