Woman cracks 100: You're never too old to run away to India for a man

Allison Mclean cracks a smile for cracking 100 years. Photo / Stephen Parker

Life is like a game of Scrabble, not chocolate. Sometimes you're dealt three Fs an S, an N and a Y and you wonder how you got to this point, or how this could happen to you. No one knows this better than Allison Maclean, with 100 years worth of experiences in her arsenal. But no matter whether the hand was good or awful, she still managed to make a plan. Even if the word she puts down is MERI instead of MERRY.
"Do you think the Queen has false teeth?"

This was the first thing Allison Mclean asked when she opened her letter of congratulations from the Queen, with a grinning shot of Her Majesty on the front.

The lively 100-year-old is never one to shy away from a challenge - when she turned 90, she declared she would live to 100 years for her letter from the Queen. And, yesterday, she reached that goal.

When asked if it was worth the wait, Allison laughs, shrugs, flashes those pearly (also false) whites and says: "I suppose."

At 100, her memories are not always clear. But a few things have stayed consistent: her hard-head, gentle heart and love of the board game, Scrabble.

She met her husband, Arthur, during her party days in her 20s.

"He was keen and I was keen, and that was that."

Together they had five sons and a daughter.

She enjoyed fast cars, but not as much as her motorhome. The hobby began when she was 50 and she and her husband owned six over the next 35 years.

"I loved it, I just love travel."

No spot in New Zealand was left unexplored and the couple took their motorhome lifestyle abroad: Australia, Europe, America.

"It was just marvellous," she said.

Spelling out the joy she got from making preserves, she said the family would go to Hastings every year, load up the car and trailer with boxes of apples, apricots and peaches.

"I'd do bottles and bottles . . . 150, at least," she said modestly.

The Bay of Plenty always had a special place in her heart and the family made regular trips from their home in Feilding to Lake Rotoiti, leaving at 2am.

She fell in love with a house in Rotorua near the golf course.

"Before I returned to Feilding I instructed the land agent to contact me when something similar came up."

Ten days later, he did, the very house she wanted, and she has called Rotorua home for the 40 years since, true to her hard-head.

But, just like her favourite game, the unexpected was always around the corner. Flipping the tiles when she was 70 had her run away with another man.

She went to India with her daughter and, when they came back to New Zealand, Allison packed her bags and left her husband.

"I fell in love with a Punjabi . . . so I went over there."

She was there for just two months when she drew an S-H-X-T hand. She caught a bad bug and, after threats from a friend to call the embassy, she came back to her husband.

"I had to, there was no choice," she said.

The couple remained married until Arthur died in 2003.

It was not her only overseas adventure.

A family friend, known as Archie, wanted to go to Denmark and Allison's daughter Justine told her she should go with him. The only catch was she needed to give Archie, a diabetic, his insulin injections.

After initially rejecting it with a firm "stuff that", Allison changed her mind, practised injections on a defrosted chicken and went to Denmark.

Now, she is the reigning Scrabble champ at Lara Lodge Care Home, no surprise given her past experiences of travelling to the Pacific Islands for competitions, raking in money and first-place titles.

But on her 100th birthday, her body is not as active as her mind and she is too tired to play her favourite game, swapping the board for bunting and cake.

Despite this, she still manages to whip out her party trick.

With another flash of her pearly whites, she stands up, bends over and effortlessly touches her toes.

It is clear Allison intends to carry on into her 11th decade the same way she lived the previous 10 - by making her own rules.