By Palko Karasz 30 March 2019
As it became clear that the withdrawal known as Brexit wouldn’t happen on his birthday after all, Mr. Weighton, who lives in southern England, echoed a growing frustration with the current political deadlock, calling it “a total mess.”
“My own feeling is that if there were defects — and there were quite obviously defects — we can negotiate on the inside rather than walking off the field with the cricket ball and saying ‘I’m not playing,’” Mr. Weighton told the BBC.
But the most common question he has been asked does not concern politics. He said most people wanted to know the secret to his longevity — something to which he could not respond.
“I have no answer, except to avoid dying,” he said.
The oldest person on record living in Britain is a woman: Grace Jones turned 112 in September. But men are increasingly living past the age of 90, and more than 14,000 centenarians were living in Britain in 2017, the most recent year such statistics are available, according to the Office for National Statistics.
Government population estimates see the number of centenarians passing 65,000 by 2031.
Most British citizens receive a personal greeting from Queen Elizabeth II on their 100th and 105th birthdays, and one for each year past the age of 110. Mr. Weighton told the BBC that he would ask the monarch to stop sending him cards in order to save public funds.
Mr. Weighton and Mr. Smith, who lives in Scotland, were both born on March 29, 1908. In recent years, their photographs have appeared in the news side by side, sitting in armchairs 500 miles apart. Though they have never met in person, the two men have exchanged birthday cards.
“I feel he’s a twin brother, although technically he’s not,” Mr. Smith said of Mr. Weighton in an interview last year with the Scottish network STV.
Both men have led an adventurous life spanning continents and different jobs. In the 1930s, Mr. Weighton taught at a missionary school in Taiwan, and moved to the United States by way of Canada.
He and his wife, Agnes, were in the United States during the attack on Pearl Harbor that drew the country into World War II. He has a son who married a Swede and a daughter who married a German.
“I flatly refuse to regard my grandchildren as foreigners,” he told The Guardian last year. “I’m an internationalist, but I’ve not lost my pride in being a Yorkshireman or British.”
Mr. Smith immigrated to Canada in 1927 and worked on a farm there. But he returned to Scotland after five years to drive trucks for his brother. He was a farmer until his retirement at the age of 70.
“I like to think I’ve lived a decent life,” he told The Scotsman newspaper this past week. “I do ask myself — why me? Why have I lived so long when others haven’t?” he asked. His wife died more than 15 years ago at 97, and one of his sons died in 2016.
As to longevity, Mr. Smith had no definitive answer, either.
“Porridge is helpful,” he said, “and having a job you enjoy.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/30/world/europe/uk-britain-oldest-man.html
