At 96, Kathleen

At 96, Kathleen is currently the oldest of the 1000 Londoners. She has an unstoppable enthusiasm for life and won’t let living in a care home subdue her youthful energy.

1000 LONDONERS

This film is part of 1000 Londoners, a five-year digital project which aims to create a digital portrait of a city through 1000 of the people who identify themselves with it. The profile contains a 3 minute film that gives an insight into the life of the Londoner, as well as their personal photos of London and some answers to crucial questions about their views on London life. Over the course of the project we aim to reveal as many facets of the capital as possible, seeing city life from 1000 points of view.

www.1000londoners.com
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www.facebook.com/1000londoners
Twitter: @1000_londoners

1000 Londoners is produced by South London based film production company and social enterprise, Chocolate Films. The filmmakers from Chocolate Films will be both producing the films and providing opportunities to young people and community groups to make their own short documentaries, which will contribute to the 1000 films. Visit www.chocolatefilms.com.

TRANSCRIPT

Well, my name's Kathleen Wood, Kathleen Louise Wood. And I was born down in Kilburn. So, I have come from quite a good family. I'm not clever. I'm just a happy person, I think. I like helping other people. I always say: be nice to people, give them a smile. And if you can't be nice to people, well don't.

I wanted to be a dancer, but my father wouldn't let me. And I liked singing. My father and my mother took me up to London, don't ask me where it was, to go into pantomimes and tap dancing and everything. They offered to pay for my costumes and everything. Not my parents, 'cause my father controlled everything, and my father said no. So what he took me up there for, I don't know. I was a teenager then. Then I wanted to teach dancing, for a licence. My father wouldn't let me do it. But then it's come out on my daughter.

He was very polite. Always made sure that I walked inside, where the pavement was, so with the traffic he was on the outside. Always made sure I got on and off the busses. And he was just, well I would say a perfect gentleman. We were working in factories. He told me he looked at my legs and liked them. And he started buying me boxes of chocolate, slabs of Cadbury's chocolate. Did yeah. And I felt…

I was already engaged to somebody else that my mum pushed me onto, which I didn't even like. And he said: I'll take you out tomorrow. So I said: alright. And we went up to London. And this was a lovely lace dress, which was off-ration because it was lace. I don't know why. He said: I'll buy you that if you marry me. And I didn't answer him.

We got married in 1941, Saturday night, was it 5 o'clock? When the war was on. And then he went back and I cried all the way home after saying goodbye to him. You might not believe it, but I was very quiet and timid. Very, very quiet. I think my personality came out on me after I lost my husband and I went and did the coffee morning at the Baptist Church and it was the finest thing, something that I really liked doing. I used to make people laugh and I used to cheer them up, you know. And they were younger than me, I was serving people younger than me. I did it for 26 years.

I don't know why I've lived so long. I've always worked hard and looked after my family. I just used to do everything for everybody else. I worked hard. There's not much more to say, 'cause I can't say much more. It's boring, I think.