Celebration for Portsoy woman who's 105
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An "amazing" Portsoy woman has celebrated reaching the remarkable age of 105.
Madeline Shacklock (nee Watt) marked the milestone birthday with her family and friends at lunches in the Fife Lodge Hotel in Banff and Station Hotel in Portsoy.
She also received a congratulatory birthday card from King Charles and Queen Camilla.
Madeline was born in Glasgow just weeks before the end of the World War One in 1918.
She attended the city's Woodside School where she excelled in English, history and languages, becoming the school's dux.
Madeline was 21 and working as a secretary with the London, Midland and Scottish Railway Company when World War Two broke out.
She was keen to join the Women's Royal Naval Service (Wrens) but was not allowed to as she was in a reserved occupation of national importance, so she joined the fire service instead.
In 1943, she married her first husband who was in the Merchant Navy and near the end of the conflict they moved to his home town of Macduff, where her first child was born, and then settled in Portsoy in 1946.
She and her second husband, Captain Herbert Shacklock, continued to stay in the town.
Madeline has four children, five grandchildren and five great-grandchildren.
Her granddaughter Julia Rickard said: "She really is an amazing lady. She even stayed up past midnight on the eve of her birthday so she could see it in with a glass of fizz.
"Her interests over the years have included music, history and travel.
"She travelled extensively on the ships around the world, and continued to travel around Europe with her daughter, Evelyn, right up to her 90s where her fluency in a number of languages stood her in good stead. She likes to keep up-to-date with current affairs.
"She visited Crudie School at the age of 99, when I was head teacher there, and spoke to the pupils about her experiences of the Glasgow Blitz of which she still has vivid memories, giving them a unique insight into what life was like in wartime Britain."
