Tauranga woman Margaret Lambourn celebrated her centenary yesterday sharing the "adventures" of her 100-year life with friends and family, but some secrets she will never tell.
The retirement village resident was once a spy in Egypt during World War II, working as a decoder of messages for the Royal Air Force.
"It was quite exciting. I wasn't in uniform, I had a big machine and we would decode messages from the Germans and Russians."
Mrs Lambourn wouldn't share any of the tales she uncovered.
"No I can't tell you that, it was all secret."
Born Winifred Margaret Heseltine, the middle child of nine, Margaret Lambourn entered the world with jet black hair while her siblings were all blonde.
Dressed in a pink suit with bright blue eyes, she celebrated her 100th birthday yesterday - with a few of those black strands of hair still shining through.
As a child she lived with her parents, Florence Elizabeth, an organist and John Edward Heseltine, a masonry worker on the Duke of Devonshire's estate in England.
"The sick lambs were brought into the kitchen and hand fed until they were stronger. We had quite a big house but there was no electricity in the house so we had lamps and candles.
"We had front and back stairs so it was a lovely house to play hide and seek in - seven big double bedrooms."
Mrs Lambourn wanted to study drama but her father would not allow it.
Instead she studied nursing at the Royal Berkshire Hospital where she met her future husband, Alan.
"I was staff nurse on duty on Christmas Day in 1937 when Alan came to visit a friend who was on my ward and to take a look at the 'smashing staff nurse'."
It was love at first sight. "I had a letter every day from Alan and two on Monday morning."
They were married in 1938 and moved to Egypt where Alan was posted as 2nd Lieutenant Garrison Engineers in Ismailia.
It was there that she was invited by the Royal Air Force to do espionage work. "Which I did."
She loved living in the Arab country where they had an active social life and she developed a life-long passion for tennis.
She had to evacuate after two years because "the headquarters in Cairo wanted all the women out" - they didn't want women there when they were going to war, she said.
At the time she was pregnant with her first child, Suzie, and left on a midnight train for South Africa via Jerusalem accompanied by her dachshund, Geordie.
"A man opened the carriage door and said, 'sorry Margaret but you can't take the dog'. I was devastated and made him promise me two things: I told him where Alan was in the desert and said try and get him to Alan, but if not put him down.
"He got to Alan and I got a cable three weeks later to say 'Geordie arriving, on Dutch tanker'."
She then worked in Durban, South Africa, as a waitress at the Victoria League before applying for repatriation back to England.
She arrived back in England during the second phase of rocket warfare where the couple had two more children, Michael and Andrew.
After the war the family moved to Kuwait where Alan, a qualified architect spent 14 years working as chief architect to the Kuwait Oil Co Ltd.
Mrs Lambourn lived a busy life buying a nursery school which she loved.
The couple moved to New Zealand in 1972.
The pair first lived in Kerikeri where they had a garden nursery and she set up meals on wheels in the area before moving to Greenwood Park Village in the Bay of Plenty in 1989.
Growing up she never thought she would have the adventures she has had but has enjoyed every step of the journey.
Decoding for the RAF and coming out on the ship to New Zealand were by far two of her best experiences, she said.
"And meeting Alan, of course."
His portrait still adorns the wall of her living room.
He passed away in 2002 in his 90th year.
"I remember I was holding his wrist and I knew the exact moment his heart stopped. At 10 minutes past two on April 24. We'd had 64 years together."
With her three children, five grandchildren and five great-grandchildren she is an inspiration to those around her.
Today, she still enjoys an active life where she plays bowls, scrabble with her son, bridge with others in the village, reads and plays the piano.
"I know I am old but I don't feel old. I feel privileged to have lived such a long, interesting life. I hoped I would, but you never know what's coming, do you? You never know what tomorrow brings."