I've not regretted one moment...PROHIBITED

Joyce has retired from nursing at age of 95

- ADAM ASPINALL

FROM the age of five, Joyce Standring knew she wanted to be a nurse, and by the time she was 11, as the Second World War raged, she was helping on a children's ward with the Red Cross.

At 17, she told her parents she was to train as a nurse and recalls: "My father laughed as he thought I'd faint at the sight of blood." He was wrong and she began her professional nursing career in January 1948, six months before the birth of the NHS.

Now, 76 years later, she is finally retiring at the age of 95.