OSMINGTON’S most senior citizen, Reg Smith, celebrated his 100th birthday on 18 August.

Since coming to live at Fermoy House in the 1960s Reg has been one of the most faithful members of St. Osmund’s congregation. Though the church choir, of which he was one of the stalwarts, has long since disappeared, he still tackles the steep path to the church every Sunday, to take his place alongside the organ.

A small surprise party was therefore arranged for him in the church after the morning service on Sunday, 17 August, when he was presented with a special birthday cake by Andrew Mills, who had conducted the service.

Reg was born in 1909 in South Molton, in North Devon, but has spent most of his life in the Weymouth area, though with a spell in the RAF and some time in London, where he met his wife and stage partner, Win. Together, as Renaldi and Karina, they started by busking in theatre queues, then took their acrobatic dance act around the variety theatres. Even as recently as the 1980s they remained fit enough to resurrect their act for BBC television.

By then, they had become firmly established in the Osmington community. Reg invested in several development sites in Osmington in the 1960s and, with his builder son, Ivan, started adding some attractive homes to the village landscape. Meanwhile, until her death in 1998, Win’s cream teas at Fermoy became famous far and wide.

Asked about his recipe for long life, Reg advocates taking plenty of exercise, using your limbs (he still does weight training in his garage) and not eating too much.

All in all, Reg has plenty of achievements to look back on in his century of life, and we hope he will continue to enjoy them for many more years to come.

  • THE Friends of St. Osmund want to thank all those who helped to make this year’s village fête so successful, by organising events, by helping with erecting and clearing up, or just by spending their money in a good cause.

    We were amazingly fortunate in finding the one fine day between this year’s series of weather fronts, so that the number of visitors was only slightly down on last year, and they all seemed happy. Profits were slightly below £2,500, which is a really good result in the current economic gloom. It all helps to keep St. Osmund’s church well maintained and up-to-date.

  • DORSET Police are hoping shortly to run a pilot Community Road Watch scheme, in which local volunteers, who have first to be vetted and trained, are equipped with laser devices to monitor the speeds of vehicles passing through their village. Details of vehicles exceeding the speed limit are passed to the police who, on the first occasion, issue a warning to the owners. The site of the proposed pilot is a village not far from Osmington, which has similar problems with speeding vehicles.

    If the pilot is a success and the scheme is to be extended to other villages, Osmington would be well placed if we already had a list of people willing to be trained volunteers. If you would like your name to go on such a list, please contact Mike Hart on 01305 834797.