ONE HUNDRED years is a long time, but if you’re Dennis Barber, it’s enough time to serve in Africa during the Second World War, own a shop in Waterlooville, become chairman of the Chamber of Commerce and even become president of a bowls club at the age of 99.

Dennis Barber, who lives in Kempshott after growing up in Waterlooville, is celebrating his centenary birthday on Christmas Eve.

To celebrate, his family have organised a number of surprises for him throughout the year, including one that saw him attend RAF Odiham’s OAP and Veteran’s Christmas lunch earlier this month.

Whilst there, he was presented with a birthday cake and, more importantly for Dennis, treated to a tour around a Chinook.

“It was brilliant,” Dennis said. “I’ve been on many RAF stations. They treated us to a meal then afterwards I went with one of the pilots who asked me to sit in the co-pilots seat.

“I was so used to being in cockpits and so many switches, but there it is amazing, I was afraid I might touch the wrong one!”

As well as the trip to Odiham, Dennis got a ride around RNAS Lee-on-Solent in a Spitfire, a VIP-day at boyhood football club Portsmouth, guest of honour at D-day commemorations, and had high tea at Lord’s Cricket Ground.

For Dennis’s daughter, Patricia Johnston, the idea was all about making memories.

“We thought that Dad has got everything that he wants, he doesn’t need for anything, and we thought experiences with various family members was something to remember and something he would actually really enjoy.

“You can’t put a price on that can you?

“He’s amazing, he’s very fit, he looks after himself.”

Dennis puts this down to being active throughout his life. As a boy, he played football and cricket, and, whilst in the RAF posted in Southern Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe, he played alongside county-standard cricketers against the South African touring side.

One of the highlights in his cricketing career was playing at the Hambledon Bat and Ball, known as the ‘cradle of cricket’.

“I always try to have an active mind and an active body,” Dennis continued. “All my life I’ve always been sporty.”

It was when his wife Winifred, whom he was married to for 68 years after meeting at RAF Brockenhurst during World War II, passed away that he opened the latest chapter in his sporting career – bowls.

“I was left in limbo, I didn’t know what to do,” he says about Winifred’s passing in 2013. “This leaflet came through the door, they wanted new players for a bowling club.”

Dennis went along and realised immediately that this was what he wanted to do.

“I was 94 then, and now I’m president of the Howard Park Bowls Club. I’ve done one year which was our 50th anniversary, and now they want me to be president again for this year.”

Dennis doesn’t know much about what his birthday and Christmas has in store for him. “I’m not supposed to know! I should think that we’ll have all the family around and I don’t think that we’ll stop talking all the time.

“I’ve got an amazing family, they’re so good to me,” he says.

Instead of gifts this year, his family are donating to a charity close to Dennis’s heart, the RAF Benevolent Fund. “It’s putting something back into what Dad enjoyed,” Patricia says.

You can find out more about them by going to www.rafbf.org/.