Renee's still showing no signs of slowing down

Renee Seftor, a veteran of the Women's Auxiliary Air Force, is still working with the family furrier firm as she approaches 90 years of age. She speaks to John Gibson.

She is truly unique. A survivor of the Second World War blitz. Not in Clydebank or London or Coventry - in, of all British cities, Swansea.

Renee Seftor, living and working in Edinburgh's Southside, was a WAAF member in the Welsh city at the height of the terror bombing in 1940-42.

Now aged 89 and still employed, still sharp and full of the joys, she joined up, volunteered, imbued with the your-country-needs-you public spirit of the time.

"I volunteered for the Air Force and I was posted to a station at Swansea as a 'clerk special duties', in effect a plotter. We plotted on huge boards the movements of German aircraft and of our own aircraft sent up to intercept them.

"You really did feel you were 'doing your bit'."

Renee has been in the family furrier business all her life. "My father had a shop in Gillespie Crescent in Bruntsfield in 1912, before my late husband Arnold took over.

"We moved into the city centre with it to Shandwick Place, then into Marchmont Crescent, where our son Brian inherited the business.

"At 64 he has been talking about retiring and ideally I'd like our grandchildren to carry it on, but they've shown scant interest. So we could be talking about the final curtain, so to speak, for Seftors."

Renee's task in what may prove to be the firm's twilight years is "public relations", a job that takes her out and about a lot.

She takes unconcealed pride in the family's connection with George Watson's. "We've had four generations at the school. "Four generations. You'd think that somewhere in the school we'd have the family name chiselled in stone, and I'm jesting of course."

Renee's husband, who died in 1994, was an enthusiastic Rotarian in the Capital, rarely missing the Rotary International Club of Edinburgh's regular business lunches in the major hotels.

Over the years she has been involved with various charities, including King George's Fund for Sailors, the Infantile Paralysis Fellowship, the Scottish Girls Training Corps and the Waverley House for Wayward Boys at Colinton.

Her major hobby is embroidery along with reading, radio and she listens to jazz a lot.

"Life has been fulfilling, never boring. I wouldn't have wanted to miss any of it. Not even when I was in uniform with the blitz going on," she says.

"Little did I dream of a life this long, I must say. I've been exceptionally fortunate."

Ninety? Will Renee Seftor make it? Ever the optimist, she'll tell you she's very much up for it, insisting there's so much more living to do.