KATHLEEN Danks is having a ball on turning 100 this week.

Kath’s a first team regular with the chair football team at Leominster’s Forbury residential home.

And she’s not adverse to putting her foot in to win a tackle.

At the Forbury they say Kath’s pretty special for her age.

If chair football is not her match of the day she can usually be found working on her watercolours or creating collages.

Trips out are are a treat, too.

In September she took in a canal boat journey and just after Christmas it was Jack and the Beanstalk at the Courtyard in Hereford.

Born in January 1915, Kath grew up in Tipton.

The First World War and subsequent conflict in Ireland meant she didn’t see her dad until she was five.

For much of that time Kath lived with an aunt as her mother was working in a munitions factory.

Kath’s wedding on a “summer Saturday” in 1937 is a special memory along with moving into a house built by her first husband who died in 1960.

Kath staved off retirement until she was 70, having moved south with her second husband to help her brother run his pub in Dorset and working in a company canteen.

When her second husband died Kath kept up an independent life into her late 70s when she was still regularly walking more than two miles from her flat to the shops.

Kath was 82 when she moved to Chapel Lawn, near Clun, to live with her sister Monica.

She had looked after Monica, 12 years her junior, on leaving school at 14.

The Forbury has been her home now for 11 years.

There, Kath’s big day was celebrated with a special party last Sunday.