Real Lives: Family devotee Elizabeth celebrates 100th birthday

Elizabeth Laidlaw celebrates her 100th birthday today with friends at her nursing home in the Grange.

Miss Laidlaw grew up at Hope Park Terrace, off Clerk Street, with parents Hannah and Andrew Laidlaw, and siblings Agnes, Hannah, Sylvia, Janet and Sonny.

On leaving school she worked for Crawfords the Bakers on The Bridges, and then went to Bairds Bootmaker near Hunter Square, where she worked for several years.

In her late forties she left the job to care for her parents, with whom she still lived, by now in Livingstone Place.

After the death of her mother, she worked as a cleaner at various private houses, a job she continued to enjoy until she retired in her 80s. She moved about five years ago to Camilla Nursing Home in the Grange, where her niece Hannah Laffery said she was very happy.

Ms Lafferty said her aunt had been devoted to her family throughout her life: "She's a very quiet lady and mostly looked after family and wasn't into going out partying, but would meet up with family. All the girls would meet together on Saturday afternoons and have a chat and a coffee."

Deputy Manager at Camilla Nursing Home, Kim Christie, said she and the staff would help Miss Laidlaw celebrate.

She said: "We all love her. For the age she is, she's fantastic.

"She's a very friendly and outgoing lady. She's very affectionate. I think she enjoys living here and thinks of her room as he own little flat.

"The staff find her to be like part of the family here, rather than just someone that you look after and I think that's down to the way that she is, because she's so friendly and obliging, she would do anything for you."

Les Geddes, a 90-year-old who developed an aid to help visually impaired people read has won a national award, along with his team of volunteers.

Mr Geddes, right, from Silverknowes, invented the Geddes Reader - a small camera which is placed over text or pictures and projects them on to a larger screen.

It is particularly useful for people with macular disease, which blurs the central vision making it difficult to read.

He will receive the Macular Disease Society prize at a conference in London along with team members from the not-for-profit organisation, Jim Flitter, Ken Ramsay, Ian and Sandra Brown and George Kay.

Mr Geddes, who originally designed the reader to help his wife, said: "I am priveleged that at the age of 90 my product has benefited so many people with MD. We have sold over 1000 readers."

He was born in Arbroath and moved to the Capital in the 1950s with his wife Anne, 84, where he worked as an engineer for Ferranti. He has a son, John, and a daughter, Margaret, three granchildren and one great-grandchild.