Simone at 103

Plus: car park tyranny

July 2 2025 update: today my wife Joëlle took a call from her sister to learn her aunt Simone has died. She was 103, an age few of us can expect to reach, and lived a full life, outliving her own sister - Joëlle’s mother - by more than 30 years. She will be greatly missed, but also fondly remembered as the lovely, quite formidable woman she was. Repose en paix, Ta Ta. The following article appeared in January to mark Simone’s 103rd birthday …

On this day, January 30, in 1922, front pages in many countries reported the death of the explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton. Michael Collins chaired the opening meeting of a committee drafting the constitution of the Irish Free State, a modest first step towards independence for 26 of Ireland’s 32 counties. The World Court, created by the League of Nations, held session for the first time in The Hague.

And in the lush French département of la Sarthe, Simone Legendre drew her first breath. Today, Tata Simone - aunt to Joëlle, my wife, great-aunt to our daughters - is 103. She’ll celebrate her birthday quietly with family in a care home at Sillé-le-Guillaume but was, until only a year ago, still living alone and mostly fending for herself in her bungalow in the nearby village of Mont-Saint-Jean.

Tata Simone is a redoubtable woman. Age may have weakened her body but her mind remains alert, her memory strong and her observations sharp.

Homes for the elderly are not always be the most uplifting of institutions, even when run with the professionalism and care I have witnessed in my visits to Simone, the most recent on New Year’s Day. But she seems happy, there are occasional family outings - she was up until close to midnight at her son Alain’s home on Christmas Eve - and is certainly the liveliest of the residents I have seen.

When she reached 100, Simone was still living at home. A delightful celebration was held in a little hall in her village and she was in fine spirits, her enjoyment stretching to a glass, very possibly two, of champagne.

Centenarian and niece: Tata Simone with Joëlle

Simone - sometimes Simonne depending on who in the family writes her name - is a farmer’s daughter and farmer’s widow. Her marriage to Louis produced four children (one, Françoise, sadly deceased), nine grandchildren and 19 great-grandchildren.

From 2022: the French did away with monarchs so no 100th birthday telegrams

Louis was shipped off to work on farmland in a part of Silesia now Polish but controlled by Nazi Germany during the Second World War. Back home, he took pride in the apple-based eau de vie, a Sarthoise version of Calvados, that he produced on his farm.

On each of our visits, he’d hand me a litre bottle. I still have two or three, unopened, in the drinks cabinet. Tonton Louis’s eau de vie was powerful stuff, to be taken infrequently. I recall in my 20s allowing myself a small tot most evenings until I saw what it did when the tiniest of drops was spilled on a wooden mantelpiece.

If you look closely at the menus of past ceremonial feasts, you see that her name was given as Simone after her first Communion in 1933, but Simonne when she and Louis celebrated their golden wedding in 1996.

In whichever name, if my counts are right, she has lived through the terms of 18 US presidents, 23 British prime ministers and - excluding acting incumbents - 14 elected French presidents. As a French woman, she did not get the vote until 1944.

Simone recalls her youth as one of simple pleasures, regular trips to Coco plage on the lake of Sillé, accepting cigarettes from American soldiers after Liberation. At her home in Mont-Saint-Jean she kept her first wireless set, bought in the year of her marriage 1946, long after it stubbornly stopped working.

“I like a simple life,” she told her local paper on becoming a centenarian. “I preferred the old days. Life was harder but it was more beautiful.”

Bon anniversaire, Simone/Simonne, et bonne continuation.

The photos above were taken at Simone’s 100th birthday party. Below is a family group on New Year’s Day 2025. L-r: Martine (niece, Joëlle’s younger sister), Simone, Joëlle, Andre (Martine’s husband), me, Alain (Simone’s son).

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Fall flat on your face time. I mentioned last week that I would be making full access to my Salut! Life pages here payable. If that sounds grasping, please bear in mind that writing is what I do for a living.

I had intended to introduce this change immediately but am delaying it to make sure I know how to apply it fairly and, with luck, efficiently.

Some preparatory work has been done already; my plan is to continue to offer occasional posts, probably one a month, free to view. I have removed the paywall from a fair number of posts in the archive and reduced the subscription fee to £4 a month or £45 for a year. Those kind enough to subscribe already, at the earlier, higher rate, have the option of cancelling their subscriptions and resubscribing, thus losing nothing. And from time to time, as before, I shall make donations to relevant charities.

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Good news for journalists and estate agents. It’s always reassuring to find someone whose work is even more hated than your own. Step forward the nation’s car park operators.

We’ve all seen the horror stories about frightening debts clocked up because something went wrong with the system, often penalising honest motorists.

My own council, Ealing, was recently caught out by the Observer’s Your Problems ombudsman column, sticking boneheadedly to a fine imposed on a driver who keyed in 0 for O or vice versa, even though the victim had proof of payment and therefore good faith.

Also in Ealing, at the hospital, gallows humour is the resort of people huddled around whatever payment machine happens to be in working order as they try to make sense of the instructions. At least three times in recent months, I have heard patients or visitors ruefully admit that if you’re not sick when you arrive, the car park operator Acpoa will make you sure you become so.

You have to guess how long you’ll be there - a big ask at any hospital these days - and remember to top up later, irrespective of your anxieties or appointments.

Three miles away, at West Middlesex hospital, a perfectly sensible system involves entering the registration number on arrival and paying on departure for precisely the time spent there. The cost still feels like a ripoff but at least there’s an element of commonsense in its application.

My own latest encounter with car park vagaries was in Lewes, at the Southover/Western Rd site run by PaybyPhone. I entered the location code give on the notice board, paid (itself a laborious phone banking operation) and instantly received acknowledgement for successfully parking in Stoke-on-Trent, nearly 200 miles away. I then did it all over again, this time using a code that flashed up on my mobile phone screen - thus paying twice for a single use of the car park.

Only £2.80 out of pocket so I told PaybyPhone to divert it to charity. I haven’t heard back. And I’m not sure where I need to go to wring someone’s neck.

The location code given above for the above car park in Lewes - 807489 - relates to Weaver St in Stoke

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Musical postscript: when is it safe to trust an American pop star with such a grand Irish ballad as On Raglan Road? Answer: when the Chieftains invite her to sing it with the as they did to Joan Osborne a number of years ago.

A close friend undergoing chemotherapy reported that my reminder of her version cheered him up no end. I’d like to think he also smiled at my little anecdote about an exploding wine bottle in Belfast, mentioned in my piece about the song at Salut! Live