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Wednesday, January 23, 2019

If you can read this, granny fell off

Biker chick Peggy gingerly readies herself for her first bike ride in 100 years, riding pillion with a guy who ain't got no shins.
For her 100th birthday, former Howick resident Peggy Stokoe got on the back of a low slung motorbike — and then held on for dear life as 'Maritzburg’s world record rider and Out on a Limb Founder, Matthew "Bushy" McKelvey, took her for a slow cruise on Tuesday 23 January.

Six reasons to visit Pietermaritzburg

The Anniversaries Office at Buckingham Palace has confirmed it has mailed a 100th card on behalf of the Queen, but unlike Prince Phillip, who overturned his car at age 93 last week, Peggy stopped driving her beloved Hillman last year.
"Once, the licence officer asked the plate number, and I said '89'. He said 'not your age'. I said 'that is
the number — NR 89!'”
Peggy said many Howickians wanted to buy the rare plate, but the Hillman ''is over the hill'' and now good only for Cars in Park.
When you turn 100, you do as they say the Spaghetti Westerns: "We ride".
A proud ‘Geordie’ from Newcastle on Tyne in northeast England, Peggy raised her family in Zambia, where they inter alia managed the Bancroft department store, before she and her late husband made their way to SA when she was 58.
In her 41 years in Howick she "worked in most of the shops, but when Pick n Pay took over Knowles supermarket, they told me I was too old at 73."
She continued working the busy till at Grapevine coffe shop and then volunteered at the hospice until last year, when she eventually retired at 99 and now reads ‘murder books’.
Ironically the book on her bedside table is The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out of the Window and Disappeared. Impressively, the book is in fine print, which Peggy reads with one eye closed,after having had a cataract removed "a few years ago".
Always the charmer, McKelvey asked his oldest pillion rider yet what her secret is to ageing so elegantly?
‘Hard work! I’m living proof that hard work never killed anyone,’ Peggy said with a twinkle in her eye.
Asked if she’ll bungee jump for her 101st, she had one word: ‘Aikona!’.And as for what "aikona" means, check out the Hyundai Kona.