My father, Dominic Stevens, who has died aged 84, was a devoted physician with a way of wanderlust and a sort coronary heart.
For almost 20 years he practised as a GP in Bedminster, Bristol. Common observe medication fascinated him, and his explicit curiosity lay in sexual well being. He loathed smoking – he used stencils with messages comparable to “Gamers Slayers” and “Piccasilly option to die” to graffiti the partitions of Bristol’s tobacco factories a stone’s throw from his surgical procedure.
In 1986, after gaining a grasp’s diploma in tropical medication on the London College of Hygiene and Tropical Drugs, he went for a interval with Voluntary Service Abroad (VSO) to Zambia, the place he did his most difficult and rewarding work. That dream fulfilled, he returned in 1988 to normal observe in Bolton.
My father’s earliest reminiscence was travelling in wartime from Cairo, the place he was born, on a troop provider taking the then safer, lengthy route dwelling to Britain, by means of the Crimson Sea and across the Horn of Africa. His father, Charles “CP” Stevens, a physician with the Royal Military Medical Corps, had been posted to Egypt throughout the second world warfare, accompanied by his spouse, Betty (nee Gordon), and Dominic was the eldest of their 9 kids. After the warfare, the household settled in Maidenhead, Berkshire, and “CP” spent some years on the London Metropolitan Hospital board serving to arrange NHS companies.
After training at Beaumont school, Windsor, Dominic spent a yr at a Jesuit seminary. He gave that as much as prepare in medication at Bristol College, the place he met Annette Plowright on the college’s Catholic Society. They had been married in 1962, occurring to have 4 sons – Dan, Jamie, John and me – in fast succession, and to purchase and renovate a giant dilapidated Georgian home within the Hotwells district of town. Wanting daughters too, they adopted Tessa and Emma. We had been fortunate to have a big backyard that welcomed all the kids of our neighbourhood.
My dad and mom separated within the early Nineteen Eighties, and Dominic had one other son, Francis, with Katie Hudson. Shortly after, he took a hospital job abroad to economize to assist his households.
Within the late Nineties, my father moved from Bolton to Chiswick in west London. He married Debbie Brown in 2008. On the age of 70 he retired to journey extensively. He was an important buddy of the Hounslow Heath Inexperienced Gymnasium conservation group, the place his “weapon of selection” was a scythe, his eightieth birthday reward, which he used successfully to maintain brambles at bay.
My father died at dwelling, in accordance along with his intervention-free end-of-life plan. He informed considered one of his grandsons that his personal grandfather had on his deathbed suggested Dominic “to not go by the foolish notion of attempting something as soon as, and positively to not strive intercourse”. It was recommendation he ignored.
He’s survived by Debbie, his kids, Debbie’s daughters, Hannah and Julia, 17 grandchildren, and by six of his siblings. Tessa died final yr.
