Ireland’s oldest woman has marked her 109th birthday by sharing two tips on how to enjoy a long life: don’t waste time, and live it to the full.
Máirín Hughes follows her own advice by bird-watching, reading newspapers and novels, doing crosswords, listening to music, playing Scrabble – and enjoying the fuss every time she reaches another birthday. “I just like living,” she told reporters on Monday.
Hughes was born on 22 May 1914, two months before the outbreak of the first world war, and remembers her mother taking care of people during the 1918 flu pandemic.
She celebrated her latest milestone with friends by boarding a vintage bus for a tour of Dublin’s Phoenix Park, with afternoon tea, before returning to her nursing home in nearby Chapelizod.
Asked by the Irish Times about the secret to a long life, she replied: “Live life to the full. Not to waste any time, I think, is important.”
Hughes was born in Belfast and grew up in Dublin and Killarney, County Kerry. She remembers the Black and Tans – a notorious British military force in the Anglo-Irish war – and the birth of an independent Irish state in 1921.
Hughes studied science at University College Cork – an unusual choice for women at the time – and graduated with a BSc in 1935. She worked as a chemist at the university’s medical laboratory and in the 50s moved with her husband to Dublin, where she worked as a teacher. The couple did not have children.
She recalled seeing her nursing home being built 50 years ago, when she was with her mother. “Mammy asked a little boy on the road, ‘what’s that?’. He said ‘Oh that’s where the rich auld [old] ones are going to live’,” Hughes said. “I suppose I am [rich]. I’m rich in the company that I have.”
A police band and gospel choir joined the celebrations. Wearing a blazer and pink scarf, Hughes listened to fellow residents and staff sing her favourite song, the traditional Irish ballad Óró Sé Do Bheatha ‘Bhaile.
There was pleasure in simple things, she said. “I like the quietness and the birds, which we have here. They’re gorgeous around the river.”
The world’s oldest known person is María Branyas Morera, who lives in Spain. She is 116.