93-yr-old woman leads a dance class every week

She might be 93 but great-grandmother Margaret Allen can't be accused of putting her feet up.Every week she leads a 90-minute fitness class in the local Methodist church in her village of Saltburn-by-the-sea near Middlesbrough, stopping halfway through for a cup of tea so that her ladies - the youngest of whom is 60 - can have a bit of a breather.Then it's off again, leading a session she designed herself, which is a mixture of Scottish dancing, line-dancing and routines inspired by the BBC's first ever fitness instructor, Eileen Fowler. 'I want to make it fun for them,' says Margaret, who eschews modern fads such as Zumba, 'I've been teaching classes since 1965.'Around eight ladies currently attend her class, but there used to be as many as 18, plus a dog, 'who used to sit quietly in the corner' she recalls.When Margaret isn't teaching fitness classes it's still all go, as she regularly plays Scrabble with the University of the Third Age (U3A). Only this morning she beat a gentleman who exclaimed: 'I have never met anyone of your age who can play Scrabble as well as you can!'And when she's not out and about Margaret is a prolific writer of poetry. She has written six books and is now embarking on a seventh.'I write in the evenings and about anything and everything,' says Margaret. 'It's all non-fiction, about things which have happened to me. Some of them are quite naughty too, about boobs and bloomers.'In writing about her life, Margaret isn't short of material. Born in Stanley, County Durham, in 1920, Margaret was a gifted pianist from a young age and even won a scholarship to the Royal College of Music when she was 14. However she was unable to take the offer up due to family circumstances.'My life would have been quite different,' she says now. 'But I wouldn't have done half the things I have, and I wouldn't have met my husband either.'Moving to Saltburn, North Yorskshire in 1935, where she still lives, Margaret met her husband Joe at a dance.'He was a great dancer and a great singer,' she remembers. Joe, who worked for ICI, was a member of the Middlesbrough Apollo Male Voice choir. He died in 1987 and is much missed. Meanwhile Margaret, who worked in a shop, then as a railway clerk and on fire watch duty during the war, stopped work when she had her children, first Judith, now 67, and Richard, 63, but was a volunteer with the Red Cross and Christian Aid for more than 40 years and was president of Saltburn Methodist Church Women's Fellowship for more than 50.She now has four grandchildren and four great-grandchildren, the youngest of whom is just six months old, and she will be spending Christmas in Coventry with her son. In spite of her astonishing activity levels for her age, Margaret says that 'loneliness is the bugbear of society' and says that all the things she does still don't fill up her time. Whenever she gets lonely or down, she says, she picks up the phone and chats to friends, which cheers her up. 'But there's hardly anyone left now,' she sighs. 'I miss people most of all. But I lot of people are lonely, and I'd love to help them all.' (dailymail.co.uk) ANN.Az