Pensioner Gwen Rawling's home is a reflection of her life-long passions for collecting and entering competitions.

She got the competition bug as a tot at junior school and over more than 70 years has won hundreds of prizes.

And she has been collecting model mice - her bedroom cabinet is jammed with hundreds - for more than 30 years.

Since the early 1960s she has kept exercise books recording every competition she has entered and every win.

Most are small cash prizes, but in the 1970s she had a lucky streak.

In 1971 she won a £3,000 Alfa Romeo sports car - she took the cash instead - and two years later a £1,700 motor cruiser.

"It arrived on the doorstep towed by a Jaguar car. I didn't know what to do with it because I'd entered the competition to try to win one of the 250 hampers of Kraft cheese products," said Gwen, who is a member of Keighley's All Saints 60-plus Group in Highfield Lane.

"We sold it to two brothers from Riddlesden who took it to Windermere. They later told us there was nothing to match it for speed on the lake."

But Gwen, a widow - her husband Robert died three years ago - is most proud of her collection of hundreds of model mice and one rat.

They come in every material from porcelain to glass and from bread dough to coal.

And pride of place goes to a wooden clockwork mouse that does somersaults.

"He was the first I ever got. I've always liked mice - I've never been frightened of them. I love their little paws.

"When my friend and I bought two mice - they were a shilling each - and took them home, our mothers were horrified and we had to give them to a friend the next day.

"I buy them as a memento when I visit places and people always have something to buy me for Christmas - in fact I don't get much else."

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