Ward's award
"I just love my job. I love catering. It's a way of life. I can't imagine being without it."
These aren't gratuitous comments, Connie Ward means what she says and she repeats her sentiments frequently and without prompting.
Ward has been a waitress at The Mitre, a famous watering-hole and former hotel in Oxford's high street, since 1946. Her 49 years of service have been continuous, except for two maternity leaves and a couple of breaks when The Mitre temporarily closed during ownership changes.
All that time Ward has only ever waited at table, working split shifts across six days a week, and she has never wanted either to switch to another job or to move up a notch or two.
In June, she heard that her extraordinary loyalty and devotion to The Mitre is to be rewarded this autumn with an MBE "for services to the hotel and catering industry".
Talking about the award at a table in one of The Mitre's heavily timbered nooks, her eyes twinkle with excitement at the prospect of such public recognition.
Ward is 68, small and grandmotherly with snow-white curls. She speaks softly in an Oxonian accent "which a lot of people think is Somerset" and has a shy smile. This, it turns out, was her passport to her first catering job.
Born and brought up in Oxford, Ward has spent her life in the city. Leaving school at 14, the war effort quickly claimed her and she went into a factory, which she hated, "but there was nothing else".
As far back as she can remember, she'd always wanted to get into catering. The formative influence sprang from childhood trips to Lyons' restaurants.
"I suppose what started it was Lyons' ‘Sally girls', with their buttoned uniforms. As kids we used to play them up, trying to run them ragged by ordering all sorts of bits and pieces. But the idea of being a waitress really appealed, particularly as I liked running errands as a kid, and I really love food."
When the war ended, her chance to get a job in catering came through her father, a railway worker, who often shared a pint with the head waiter at the Royal Oxford Hotel.
"The head waiter asked my father if I'd like a job. He'd noticed my smile and thought I'd make a good waitress," Ward recalls. "I jumped at the chance and spent 18 months at the hotel before joining The Mitre. It was the atmosphere here that attracted me."
A historic coaching inn, The Mitre is now radically different from the privately-owned establishment Ward joined in the post-war years.
The hotel operation has gone - the bedrooms are now student accommodation for one of the university's colleges - and over the years the remaining public areas have borne the stamp of Berni Inn, Schooner, Chef & Brewer (then under Grand Metropolitan) and now Whitbread's Beefeater.
Ward has remained faithful through all the changes and says she's been largely unaffected by them, with the exception of Whitbread's takeover in 1992 when she opted to reduce her hours to the lunchtime shift six days a week.
One thing bothers her, however. Who nominated her for an MBE? "I just don't know who did it. I'd love to know. I can only guess it was one of my many regular customers. Going to Buckingham Palace this autumn to receive the MBE from the Queen will be a nice way to end 50 years in the business. I shall end on a high."
Next spring, Ward is due to retire. "I told Whitbread I would, but I hope they don't remember," she says. "I dread the thought of somebody coming up to me next year and saying ‘you've got to leave now, because you said you would'. I'd like to go on forever."
