At 100, Julia Josephs is still playing the organ in her Suffolk village, and she says music is the reason why.
Josephs, from Walberswick, is the village’s organist and choir leader at St Andrew’s Church. A service to celebrate her centenary saw her play the organ alongside a brass quintet and a choir, with some champagne as well.
“When people ask me what’s the secret [to a long life], I’d like to say a few other things, but I have to say it is music,” she said.
She learnt several instruments as a child and said: “My mother got me up with a cup of tea very early in the morning and I had to do half an hour’s practice before I went to school from the age of four or five.”
Born in 1926, Josephs was a scholar at the Royal Academy of Music. During World War Two, she commuted into London and entertained troops on the train with her viola practice. She later taught herself the organ.
Away from music, she owned and ran a girls’ school in Leicestershire. She bought her cottage in Walberswick in about 1986 after developing a love for nearby Southwold during summer visits, and she has lived there ever since.
Retiring and slowing down is not on her agenda. Once a month, she enjoys an evensong at the church where she plays the organ.
Her eyesight is not what it once was, so she uses specially printed sheet music.
“What I have to do now is have it enlarged and then memorise it,” she explained. “I try to do it last thing at night, I always think that’s good for your memory, then it’s sunk in.”
Ahead of her birthday, Josephs received a birthday card from King Charles III and Queen Camilla.
“I am so pleased and absolutely delighted because Charles was married roughly at the same time as I was, and our children are roughly the same age,” Josephs said. “I’ve always been in line with him and I was in line with the Queen [Elizabeth].”
Josephs said that as she had aged, she had noticed people getting kinder, but she was adamant she would not be moved into a care home and would remain in her own home.
Read more from BBC News.
