ONE of the oldest women in Sussex has revealed her secret to good health at the age of 105.

“Keep going. Don’t sit down,” said Eve Rudland, who has lived in Whitehawk, Brighton, for 40 years.

“I do my own cooking and cleaning. I love my knitting and codewords.

“I love life.”

In her golden years, Eve enjoys playing cards with her friends and daughters Sue and Maureen in Robert Lodge, where she first moved when she was 65.

“Ten of us moved here when it was built,” she said. “I’m the only one left.”

Though she insists she does not cheat at bridge, the former shop worker has been known to cause mischief elsewhere.

“I had a man round recently to take a look at my radiators,” said Eve, who was born in East London.

“He went in my bedroom and I asked if he wanted a quickie.

“He went a bit red and then it dawned on me.

“I meant to ask him if he wanted tea.”

“If she behaves like that we’re putting her in a home,” Sue chimed in.

As well as her knitting, Eve has written more than 100 poems on everything from motherhood to Brighton’s good old days.

“It all comes to me when I sit down,” she said.

“One time I looked up in the evening and I noticed the sky had changed colour completely.

“I wondered how many colours there were and the poem started.”

But Eve said the most remarkable thing about herself is her memory.

“I can remember things from when I was two,” she said.

“The doctors can’t understand it.

“I remember when I was two in the East End and hiding in a horse stables after a bomb dropped.

“I got lost there and a doctor took me to the police station.”

The 105-year-old even said she saw the tsunami that battered Brighton in 1929.

“I was about 11 or 12, sitting on Black Rock beach,” she said.

“The waves shrunk right back towards the horizon.

“Then a massive wave came forward.

“I thought I was the only one who remembered it, but years ago someone told me they had seen it too.”

And though husband Reg died 59 years ago, not a day goes by when Eve does not remember him.

Daughter Sue, 70, said: “She has a picture in her flat of him.

“She looks at him every day and says ‘I’ll be up there soon’.”