AT the grand age of 100, Florence Corbin knows the secret to a long and active life – a spot of Scrabble every week.

Florence, who celebrated her birthday last Monday, leads an active life in Downton. She’s a regular at the Barford Day Centre ever and is a real whiz with a Scrabble board.

She was born and raised in north London and moved to the Salisbury area about 20 years ago. Florence and her husband Edgar had two daughters, Janet and Margaret, and two granddaughters, Mary and Edwina.

Earlier in life Florence earned a living working for local government reading and pricing doctors’ prescriptions. She said: “We had these great big charts in front of us with all the ingredients and some of the prescriptions would have 10 or 11 ingredients and you had to work them all out. They’d pick one pharmacy to be checked and if they weren’t priced right they’d get a red tab on them. If those were your prescriptions you’d get in trouble.”

She also remembers living next door to actor Derek Jacobi in Leytonstone, London.

To celebrate her birthday she had she was presented with a cake at the day centre, which also reached a landmark in the same week as it has been open for 30 years.

The centre, in the Baptist Hall in Downton, is open every Wednesday from 10am to 3pm and offers a wide variety of activities from darts to belly dancing.

The centre currently has 15 members, ranging in age from 78 to 100.

For more information contact Margaret Windel on 01725 513828.