Minnie just adores life (From Stroud News and Journal)

Minnie just adores life

THERE are few people alive who know the streets of Stroud better than Minnie Jones.

For all her 94 years the bubbly pensioner has lived in the town - and amazingly has never moved more than a mile away from the house she was born in.

And on the silver anniversary of her marriage to husband Ronald, 91, Minnie told the SNJ: "Stroud is completely different to how it was. "When you look at all the shops and all things we used to have down there it has all gone now. "

Mrs Jones was born in Summer Street in 1911 and her father George Burrows fought in the First World War. She has happy childhood memories of the town.

"On our holidays we all used to walk across to Elcombe and pick blackberries," she said. "We would walk all the way back to Slad Road and up to the fruit shop in town to sell them."

Although she moved several times in her long life, she never moved more than a mile from Holy Trinity Church, where she married Ronald in 1980, aged 69.

The pair's current home in Bisley Old Road is only a hundred yards from the site of the Summer Street house Mrs Jones was born in. Despite her age Mrs Jones remains active and enjoys a night at the bingo with pals in Gloucester.

And she regrets the closure of the bingo hall in Stroud, now the site of the Warehouse nightclub.

"I wouldn't go in a nightclub," she chuckled. "I am too old for that now." Minnie and Ronald Jones celebrated their anniversary on Saturday with a family get-together in Saul.