After advertising guru Neil French branded them, and chef Gordon Ramsay lambasted them for being useless in the kitchen, Britain's women will this week launch a high-profile fightback. The old soldier is also aware of the ticking clock: "I want to stay independent as long as I can in my own pad But I know I can't go on much longer.". The doorbell goes Again. A cute little kid in a devil's outfit grins and holds out his hand. "Trick or treat, mister?" Oh really? What can a tousle-haired boy with freckles do for a trick? He can't be more than eight, but he's not impressed with the treat "What's this?" It's fruit A satsuma.
"You're having a laugh," booms a deeper, rougher voice from the shadows A big brother "Don't give him that crap.". Now a courier has brought his new 10-year passport: he is offto France for a Remembrance service.Nowadays historians scramble to interview Mr Allingham and the remaining servicemen from the Great War before it is too late. They have often asked their father to join them, but he says, "I love England." He has met most of the Royal Family.After saying the Lord's Prayer at the Cenotaph, admiring letters reached him with only his name and "Eastbourne" on the envelope. His two daughters emigrated to the US decades ago and the whole family is there now.
I knew what he was feeling, though I never suffered so bad."Mr Allingham volunteered at 19 and would have gone earlier if his mother had let him. "I was her only child and I thought too much of her to run away and enlist. Then she died at 42 and I joined up."Virtually blind and hard of hearing, he says there was little interest in his experience until he was 105, but since then he has been honoured in the UK and France. After the war, I was going to work one day when a car backfired and a man dropped flat on the ground Some people were sniggering and I wanted to throttle them. He recoils at the memory of struggling to scramble out.He also remembers the suffering of the shell-shocked "They used to hide under their beds and shake," he says "It wasn't well understood. He witnessed their nightmare as he transported weapons to the front."They couldn't dig down - six inches and they hit water," he says "So they built sandbags up eight feet high.