Two neighbours who were born on the same day in 1924 have marked their 101st birthdays together in Oxford.
Josie Church and Anne Wallace-Hadrill have lived side by side since the 1980s and say time has simply "passed" as they stayed busy with work, family, and volunteering.
Anne, a former lexicographer, served in the Royal Navy during World War II, while Josie worked as a nurse, recalling caring for SS soldiers.
Both praised their close-knit street, where neighbours came together to celebrate their milestone.
Asked about longevity, Josie said: "Just live—you go from one thing to the next."
Josie Church and Anne Wallace-Hadrill have lived side by side since the 1980s and say time has simply "passed" as they stayed busy with work, family, and volunteering.
Anne, a former lexicographer, served in the Royal Navy during World War II, while Josie worked as a nurse, recalling caring for SS soldiers.
Both praised their close-knit street, where neighbours came together to celebrate their milestone.
Asked about longevity, Josie said: "Just live—you go from one thing to the next."
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FunTranscript
00:00What's your name?
00:01Josephine Trout, but I don't get called Josephine, I get called Jo, or Josie.
00:07And how old are you?
00:09Well, I'm almost 101, not quite.
00:13Anne is the same, we were born on the same day,
00:17and we've lived together side by side since 1986, I think.
00:25Anne's husband died quite suddenly, and that's why she came to live here.
00:32And my husband had a very bad stroke, and so he was really out of the picture as well,
00:40so it was just Anne and I, you know.
00:44I don't think we've thought much about the time passing, it's just passed.
00:48No, it's just like another day.
00:51Just like another day.
00:53And do you remember when you found out that you both had the same birthday?
00:57No, I can't remember.
00:59You've just known it for a long time.
01:01We just sort of, I don't know, became aware of it somehow.
01:06And do you have any plans for celebrations this year?
01:09I think the family gathering probably for both of us.
01:13The hospital I trained in, Festervaal Infirmary, I treated SS men,
01:18they were not nice.
01:20They didn't wish to be taken care of by us.
01:23They were very difficult patients.
01:26All hospitals took in military patients.
01:31Yes, they were a big teaching hospital.
01:34Once D-Day started, D-Day brought all the casualties back across the Channel,
01:40and then they distributed them in all the hospitals.
01:43When the war finished, my husband came back to Oxford to take up his degree work.
01:49We came back here for three years, and we lived the life of an undergraduate.
01:54Oxford's very strange because each college had a large intake of older people
02:01who'd gone through the war and were taking up their university places.
02:06So you'd get the old man in the hospital,
02:08and then the young 18-year-olds coming in from school.
02:12So Oxford wasn't like it is now, it was quite different.
02:15Where did you grow up? Do you remember where you grew up?
02:18Hampshire.
02:19Hampshire.
02:20Hampshire?
02:21Yes.
02:22And what made you move to Oxford?
02:25I went to St Hilda's.
02:27Oxford alumni.
02:29Yes.
02:30And what did you study?
02:32English.
02:33English.
02:34And how was it? Because obviously it was all girls at that point.
02:37We weren't forbidden from seeing men.
02:42It wasn't made very easy, though, was it?
02:47Well, we were expected to live decent lives.
02:52You just live. There's not much you can do.
02:58You just go on from one thing to the next, don't you?
03:02Yes.
03:03Yes.
03:04Really.
03:05Whatever you do what seems to be needing doing,
03:10and then you do that, and then you sort of...
03:13something else takes its place.
03:15You just go on from one thing to another, don't you?
03:19Yes.
03:20We don't engineer our lives.
03:23I think they've just engineered us.