Great friendships, great fun and great music were constants throughout the long life of Dot Gillespie of Arbroath.
When she went to visit a friend in hospital, she walked there and back, from Arbroath to Stracathro hospital.
She loved the theatre and was a regular at Arbroath Minstrels with her great pal, Wee Meg Reid, who died in the summer aged 81.
Dottie Gillespie was 88 when she died. She hadn’t kept too well after a fall in the Abbeygate car park just before the pandemic.
She was born in 1934 in Helen Street, Arbroath, the sixth of nine children; eight girls and one boy.
Flossie, Moira, Ruth and Ed have all sadly passed, Jessie and Norma live abroad and Irene and Isobel, still live in the town.
She was educated at Inverbrothock Primary School and despite showing academic promise, left school in her early teens to help in her dad’s bakery business.
Throughout her life, however, she stayed in touch with her commercial teacher, a Miss Campbell, who always regarded her as one of her best students.
Dottie then went to work in Woolworths and it was a job she loved.
At that time, it was a much more upmarket store to the one we all knew and loved and Dottie took a great interest in the logistics of shipments, where they originated and where the lovely pottery and glass ranges were made.
After that, she went to work at Metal Box but left in 1969 when daughter, Karen, was born.
Karen said: “We lived with gran and grandad for a couple of years then moved to an attic flat on the corner of Maule Street and Lordburn. It had an outside toilet and was riddled with mice.
“We would regularly hear the snapping of mousetraps and in the mornings, mum would somehow manage to get all the traps in a carrier bag and take them down to the front door where Wee Meg’s dad would pass on his round from the mill, empty them and leave the traps for us to reuse.”
In 1976, Dottie and Karen moved to a block of flats in Millgate Loan where close friendships were formed with neighbours.
In the late 1980s, after Karen had left home, Dottie moved to Dishlandtown Street and had many great holidays and outings with her friend Ann Elrick and also Wee Meg.
Karen said: “My mum and Ann would walk for miles. A day to Montrose would actually mean walking there and back.
“Friendships were so important to her. She loved going to the Webster Theatre and mum and Maggie would book shows well in advance, always keeping the same seats.
“Saturday was party night with her sisters and friends chatting, singing with Scottish music on. We’d have an auntie on the comb and another on the spoons. It was good, clean fun.
“She had a great many friends but sadly many are gone and she would often comment about how few were left.”
Dottie was grandmother to Karen’s two children, Hal and Hannah, and made visits to their home in Heysham, Lancashire.
Conversation