A FORMER Okehampton Grammar School student celebrated his 100th birthday this week ? and is looking forward to meeting 26 members of his large family at a huge party this weekend.

Dickie Richards now lives with his wife Eileen in Littleham, but he has many fond memories of life in Okehampton before the first World War.

Dickie said: ?I was born in London but I was adopted at the age of five. My adoptive parents had a grocer?s shop at the top of the Arcade in Okehampton. It was a different sort of society then. I can remember 50 or 60 sides of bacon stored in the cellar ? it was a different world altogether.?

Dickie said he loved his days at Okehampton Grammar School.

?I had some dear friends there ? I loved the school. In my class we ended up having an MBE, an OBE, a CBE and a knighthood! Of course at the grammar school then there were just a couple of hundreds of us, whereas today you have these huge conglomerates of about 1,600.?

And unlike now, Dickie said most youngsters left school at 14 years of age.

?They had to ? the youngsters had to supplement the family income. I left at 15 and took the boy clerk?s exam in London and started on the princely wage of 90p a week ? and you had to keep yourself on that!?

Dickie worked his way through the ranks in the civil service and eventually retired as the Ministry of Employment?s deputy regional controller for London and the South East in 1965.

Since his retirement he has written a book called ?Through the Mists of Memory?, and he also enjoys painting.

His book contains fascinating insights into ordinary life in Okehampton at the beginning of the last century. For example, the habit of putting straw outside an invalid?s house to keep noise down.

?Word would go around ?the straw has been put down? and the worst was feared,? wrote Dickie.

He recalled playing marbles in the streets and listening to the bands in Simmons Park, where to play a certain piece of a music with an ?echo? section, a bandsman had to climb a tree!

Dickie said he was getting very excited about seeing his family this weekend, some of whom are travelling all the way from America for the party.

?My two sons, my daughter, my six grandchildren, one of whom is a commodore, and my eight great-grandchildren will be there. We are going to the Commodore at Instow ? it will be like a huge house party. it will be great,? said Dickie.