Dearest Dotty

“These days you go into a pub and it’s like you’re invisible,” she says.

“The barmaids just keep on talking to one another. They take no notice of you at all.

“Managers don’t seem to last five minutes, either. If you see them at all, they’re dressed like they’ve been cleaning the drains.”

Howard’s way was wholly different.

Dorothy, blousy and breezy, was an almost incandescent redhead who effortlessly and effervescently gave the lie to the mantra that gentlemen prefer blondes.

You wouldn’t call it flirting – not flirting with danger, anyway. She was just wonderfully good at her job.

She’s Darlington lass and Darlington legend, Dotty to her friends but never for a moment anyone’s fool.

Her father was a head teacher, her mother something mainline at the railway station.

Dorothy worked for 12 years at the affectionately-remembered Majestic Ballroom, served in several of the town’s licensed premises but, most memorably, at the Kings Head Hotel when it was smart enough not only to have a cocktail bar but a fully trained sommelier, as well.

The Red Lion, across the road, still had a men only bar. “Mrs Peat, the landlady, would stand at the door to ensure that women only went in the room at the back. You couldn’t do it now, but in those days it was quite accepted.”

There was also a spell at the council- run Arts Centre – “It was terrible, all those arty people, it took them an hour to hang a picture on a wall” – another when she was a relief manager throughout the North-East.

Still she can list the outlets. “Me and my little suitcase. I never stayed anywhere for long, but I always did my best for the place, usually made friends.”

For three years in the Seventies she was also licensee of the Commercial, a street corner pub in Shildon where closing time proved so moveable a feast that a group of regulars not only formed an escape committee but (it’s said) started digging a tunnel out the back.

There were plans for a helicopter, too – they were a very imaginative bunch – but it was Dorothy who couldn’t wait to be free.

“It was so quiet, I was bored silly most of the time. The pub was on Soho Street and I’d look at the sign and think how different it was from the real Soho.

“I remember going back to Darlington – broke, out of work, no home – but I was singing as I walked down the street because I wasn’t in Shildon any more.”

Joe, her first husband, kept the venerable Archdeacon. Sam Howard, her second husband, was a former chairman of the Licensed Victuallers.

Sam, smart as a carrot and engaging as a pre-nuptial agreement, was 12 years her senior. They’d several times been to the register office to fix a date, couldn’t agree, were finally locked in by the registrar until they did and allowed him to be a guest.

After Sam’s death, Dorothy became a waitress at a restaurant near the town centre.

She was 67, told them she was 52.

“You put that in the blooming paper as well,” she recalls. “I’d considered taking ten years off my age, but thought I might as well go for broke.

They probably knew, anyway.”

For five years she was also cook at the Carmelite convent, where she made lasting friendships. “I sent them a chicken at Christmas and one of them came around to thank me.

“She wouldn’t stay for a drink, but some of them like a tot of whisky.

They’re wonderful people, really.”

She lives contentedly, holds court and dresses accordingly, in a housing association flat near the town centre. The gardens have won a council award for three years running.

“My bedroom overlooks the Quaker cemetery. I can go to bed next to some rich men. It never happened while I was younger,” she says, incorrigibly.

We chatted for an hour, drank only coffee. Afterwards, Dorothy was meeting friends – in the pub, of course.