Want to know the secret to a long productive life?  Ask cake decorator, Fay Gardner. “Just keep busy,” says the sprightly 85 year-old. Fay has the vitality of a much younger woman and her voice over the phone sounds like that of a 20 year-old. “I’ve no time for old age.  You’re as old as you think you are,” she adds briskly. At this time of year, she can turn out up to 25 Gingerbread Houses a day for the Pink Ladies Shop at Royal North Shore Hospital from her tiny kitchen. She also provides the shop with small iced Christmas cakes, mini Christmas puddings and trees. A former State President and Vice President of the Cake Decorators’ Guild of NSW, she started teaching cake decorating at the Ashfield Evening College in 1964. “I was also making wedding cakes at home and working seven days and seven nights a week.” Curiously enough, it wasn’t until she was in her late 20s that she learnt to to bake a cake. “I’ve always loved decorating, but I don’t like to cook,” she confesses. “I took myself off to Liverpool Evening College to learn how to decorate and one night we were told we had to make a fruit cake. “I’d never made a fruit cake and we were as poor as church mice. “I asked my mum for her recipe and she wrote it out on the back of an envelope along with this note: ‘If you make a mess of it, give up this stupid idea of cake decorating.’” A life member of the Cake Decorators’ Guild of NSW, she also published a book Cake Decorating: A Step-by-Step Guide (A& R) in the early 1980s. When I ask if I can visit to watch her at work, she apologises in advance for the “mess” her place is in – “especially at this time of year” – and ushers me into her very orderly, charming unit and offers me a cup of tea and a sandwich. “She’s a little human dynamo,” her husband Ken tells me, his eyes twinkling as he does so. Being industrious is nothing new to her. “My Dad was a butcher in Monash Road, Gladesville, and I worked in the shop from the age of eight.” Over the years, she’s also made wedding cakes and sold cake decorating equipment from their shop in Ashfield.  Three children and four grand-children have also kept her busy. She still holds flower making days at St Luke’s Hall in Concord – if you’re interested in joining one of her classes, give her a call in the new year on 9712 2889. The edible Christmas gifts are sold from the Pink Ladies shop at Royal North Shore Hospital.  Unfortunately it can be  difficult to find in the new building as it’s located in a back corner of the lobby area on the ground floor. The Pink Ladies are the oldest volunteer group at Royal North Shore Hospital – they organise the patient trolley service, market days, fashion shows, cake stalls, barbecues, raffles and other fundraisers with which they purchase equipment for the hospital. Fay started making the Christmas cakes and gingerbread houses for the Pink Ladies 8 years ago – and, take it from me, she won’t be giving up any time soon!