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Madge Goward is still working at Walthamstow Stadium

A 94-YEAR-OLD woman who still works at Walthamstow Stadium has celebrated her birthday.

Madge Goward has been working in the Tote office for an 66 years and still puts in 20 hours, five days a week, taking bets by the side of the dog track.

A party was held on her special day at the family-owned business in Chingford Road, Chingford, a race was named in her honour and she presented the prize to the winning hound.

She said: "It was overwhelming. You don't expect anything like that because you're just one of a crowd here, there's nothing special about what I do."

But Mrs Goward's colleagues beg to differ.

Her immediate boss, Vicki Ermielli, said: "She's fantastic, I wish I had 50 more staff as good, loyal and conscientious as her. She's never short, she's never late and she never makes a mistake."

Mrs Goward, of Palmerston Road, Walthamstow, started in what turned into her first and only job in 1942 because she needed a part-time occupation to fit around her daughter, then five.

The Nazis could not stop the racing during the war and she said cashiers were blase about raids.

She said: "If the sirens went off we just used to put the money in a bag and drop down under the counter."

Before the age of computers, Tote cashiers had to be good at mental arithmetic and had an adding machine only to help work out the dividends. When computers came along 15 years ago, Mrs Goward resisted for several years but now has the measure of the machines.

As time went on she did not think of leaving, or even moving upstairs into the warm, even when she reached retirement age three decades ago.

"I just enjoyed the job, it was very interesting," she said. "I like meeting all the variety of people that you get. It's too flipping cold for some people but I prefer the cold. I don't even wear a coat.

Mrs Goward, who credits her long health to drinking cod liver oil every day and not smoking, said she never watcheD TV and could not imagine what she would do if she did not work.

"My daughter told me years ago it's about time I retired, but I didn't want to. If you don't do anything your life is over, you just sit and mope, don't you?"

"Really you could say coming here is keeping me active."

8:36am Thursday 27th March 2008

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