Christmas 2008

December 2008

Happy Christmas 2008 to all family and friends

2008 has been a fascinating year, not least because of the turmoil in the markets and financial crisis. On a more personal note my father sadly died at the end of May, not far short of his 80th birthday.

(Above - Val D'Isere Christmas 2007 Rachel, Rebecca, Ben, Sam and Joseph)

I was glad I had recently visited him and we had all this year been able to see him several times in Newcastle. This summary would not be accurate unless it said something about these sad events. It becomes more cheerful as you read fuither . We knew he was not well for some time. On the day he died the youngest two grandchildren were visiting.

Above : Christmas 2007, Newcastle

Sam, Rachel, Rebecca, Susan, Joseph holding Ben

My father

Second photograph - my father and I

He died at home in accordance with his wishes, which we were all very pleased about, something my mother managed to achieved too four years ago. Even so it was very sad for all of us. We were delighted with the turn out at his funeral. Ben played the Last Post on his trumpet and I sang from Faure's Requiem.

(Left: Morgan Family grave plot)

My brother read out an address which my sister and brother and I had written and it was a very fitting send off. He was buried in the last space available in his family burial plot with his paternal grandparents and various of his aunts and uncles in Newcastle. The gravestone has now been laid. I have had a fascinating time dealing with burial plot title deeds, undertakers and the like.

(Below - Sam and I at my mother's grave, Summer 2008)

(My parents' house in Newcastle circa 1970)

Since then there has been a massive amount to do. I have been winding up the estate myself and we have cleared the house. For a start I had to go up to Newcastle to arrange the confidential destruction of at least 50 boxes of psychiatric patient files which I needed to get down from the attic floor. Our parents moved into the house 2 days after I was born in 1961 so even after we retrieved those items we needed, there were 3.7 tonnes removed by the house clearance company in October. We completed the sale of the house at the end of October, quite an achievement in current markets. It certainly sparked many memories of my childhood, clearing the house and the like. I was very pleased with how the two sessions went when my brother and sister and I divided various items in our parents' home between us, particularly my father's book collection. We will have a session at my house in 2009 to go through the family photographs. It was very hard to know what to leave in the house and what to take. When we moved to our large house here in Pinner in 1997 I said I aimed to empty the house (of possessions, not children) but as both girls have moved home for two years law school after university it feels like more not less is added. So I kept what the girls might want to furnish a first flat, sentimental value items and organised Pickfords twice in June or July and then October to bring items down here from Newcastle. It is a strange feeling to lose the connection. I will certainly be visiting early in the New Year as I have not yet seen the newly laid gravestone. It was great that my brother was able to get up there on 26th November, when my father would have turned 80.

Rachel who has just turned 24 years old, plans to buy a property in about three years' time in London when she qualifies as a solicitor, so I arranged to have brought back from Newcastle a garage full of furniture for her. She is now on her gap year, her first gap year ever, and starts her training contract at City law firm Macfarlanes in September 2009. She achieved a commendation in her Legal Practice Course finals this summer, went off to South East Asia and is now working in Whistler until April, when she will travel again before returning in the Autumn to start work. I am taking the four other children to see her and for a week's skiing holiday in Whistler on 24th December which we are all very much looking forward to as we did not get a holiday together in the summer.

(Nottingham University- Rebecca's graduation - Rebecca with Ben and me and Sam and Joseph, foreground July 2008 - Rachel was abroad on her gap year)

(Rebecca's Graduation photo)

Rebecca has just turned 22 and graduated with a 2/1 BSc from Nottingham in Geography this summer. The three boys and I enjoyed attending her graduation ceremony this summer. She is really enjoying the Graduate Diploma in Law (law conversion course) at BPP law school in London and living at home for this year and next year when she does the Legal Practice course, the final academic stage of training for solicitors. I am also enjoying discussing constitutional law issues with her (arrest in the commons etc) and yesterday she was even doing competition law, one of my main areas of practice.

She then intends, like Rachel, to take a gap year and ideally start a legal training contract with a City law firm in September 2011. She is just starting the applicaioon process to law firms. She enjoyed trips to Greece, Israel and the South of France this summer with friends.

(Rebecca, Greece, Summer 2008)

Rebecca has joined a local lacrosse team now that she is living back home and has just joined the King's College gym at Waterloo which is near law school.

(Rachel riding Tarsy, June 2008)

We sold our last remaining horse, Tarsy, this summer just before Rachel went abroad on her gap year. The girls were delighted with the new owner and went over to visit Tarsy in Hertfordshire in October when Rachel was home for a few days. It is the first time they have not had a horse since they were about 9 or 10 when we bought their first pony, Muffin, but it was a logical time to sell.

Ben (20) has now started his last year reading Ancient History at Reading University and not yet decided what he will do next. His interests are political. He is incredibly helpful with the twins and cooks their dinnner every night. The twins just turned ten and have another three years at their current prep. school. They have very much enjoyed the senior choir this term, sang carols at an old people's home today and next week Rebecca and I will go to see them in the carol service where Sam is also playing the trumpet in the orchestra.

We learned this week they have both passed their grade 3 singing exam which I put them in for. Grade 1 theory results are still awaited which again I taught them this term and which we found quite fun. Sam also passed grade 3 trumpet exam earlier this year and Joseph grade 1 flute, but Joe has not taken to it and is now learning the French Horn and may take grade 1 next term. Sam enjoys playing in the rugby team and even Joe has enjoyed a few rugby matches this term. They now care for Rebecca's rabbit from university and have a hamster and fish. They are very happy cheerful boys which is lovely to see.

(Cocos Island, Panama, January 2008)

In January Rebecca and I had a lovely trip to Panama including to my island there and were able to combine it with Rebecca's final year geography dissertation on tourism in that group of islands, the Pearl Islands. We stayed in Panama City and then on Contadora Island. We have not built on the island yet but hope to spend the night next time, camping there. It was very good to be left there this time rather than having a boatman waiting. Our host, the local agent, originally from the USA, who showed me round when I first bought the island, has recently died, sadly. I did not see the snake this time but I managed to lose myself on a walk on the island, although I did find my tracks in the end. We took lots of photographs and video footage.

Apart from dealing with my father's illness, incapacity then death and the estate and house clearance I have also been busy with work, but that is very enjoyable and going fine so far. I have more potential litigation matters but earlier this year acted on two business sales so even some deals are still being done. A lot of my advice is advisory on contracts in any event and I update a large number of looseleaf books and always have one or two writing projects on the go. The 7th edition of Beswick and Wine book "Buying and Selling Private Companies and Businesses " which I wrote has come out this year.

I have had a spate of foreign conferences. I gave a two day course in Iran this Autumn and was met at the airport with robe and head covering - an interesting experience arranged on 5 days' notice. I wlil not reveal the photographs here. They took hundreds of photographs over the two days and videoed the whole thing, called me professor, played the Iranian National Anthem when I arrived and were terribly good hosts. My first night was on the plane and straight from the air port I went to speak for 7 hours, second night at the hotel, third on the plane and straight from there to give a 3 hour seminar in London so very busy and then 2 weeks later, the week before last I was given a week's notice to speak in Amsterdam for 2 days. I have also given day courses in Vienna and Frankfurt this Autumn , although Slough is a more usual type of destination and arrangements for the children are always complicated when I have these trips. However the older children are marvellous at helping with the twins. I like how well everyone gets on, which perhaps is just the difference between three teenagers and three graduates or almost graduates.

I had to let attendance at Lawyers' Music lapse this year (and bikram yoga) but I hope to rejoin the choir next year. I did manage to get the outside of the house repainted - window frames etc this Autumn which took three men over three weeks and needed scaffolding as the glass dome at the top of the house isn't reachable by ladders, but it all looks much better now it's completed. I also did some work in the garden.

I have continued as Chairman of the Pinner Hill Residents Association where I live and have just started my second year in the Chair which is always fascinating and great fun. Put 88 people in a private estate of houses worth £1m - £3.5m together.... or is it 50p nowadays?... and you get a wonderful mixture of people. Workwise I have remained on the Board of the Direct Marketing Authority which recently relaunched as the Direct Marketing Commission and I will attend their annual awards dinner next week and then Christmas lunch the week after. There are always far too many social events and if I am away speaking or in client meetings out of London more than 1 or 2 nights a week there certainly is a lot to balance at times. What is clear is how much easier it is, however, than when we had three children under four and I commuted to the City every day as a 26 year old junior solicitor or even when the twins were little when I was 36-40. The twins walk home from school and I walk them to school when I am here (the school is at the end of our road) and this year they stopped needing after school childcare at home as I or Ben or Rebecca are here when they get home at 4pm.

I was on Channel 5 briefly this year talking about data protection law as well as being interviewed about my career for a legal web site for a radio webcast. The links if you want to listen are on the home page of my web site www.singlelaw.com. I managed to get a photo of my father and obituary into the Newcastle Journal newspaper earlier this year and my brother arranged one or two other medical obituaries to appear including in the BMJ. I will print those at the end of this but the print will be too small to read. Our father worked for over 50 years as a doctor right until he retired from full time work aged 77 just two years before he died. I include with this post below a copy of the Funeral address which we handed out in May in case anyone is interested and it includes the last photograph with my father with all nine grandchildren on it.

Susan

Funeral of Dr Peter Morgan

In Memoriam

26th November 1928 to 23rd May 2008

St Gabriel's Church, Heaton, Newcastle upon Tyne

and after at St Andrew's Cemetery 11am

30th May 2008 10am

EULOGY

Susan, Victoria and I wanted to say a few words about our father, Peter Morgan, about his life, work and himself. He was a man who made his mark on the world and powerfully benefited so many lives. His positive influence lives on and I can feel him here with us today, laughing at us all!

Born in Bishop Auckland in 1928, son of a successful auctioneer and valuer, he attended James I Bishop Auckland Grammar School and then read physics after the war at Durham University of which King's College, Newcastle was then a part. His time at University was one of his happiest and he combined his joy of life with a strong social conscience. He was more active outside than inside the lecture theatre and heavily involved in local music. He met our late mother Anne, a teacher, during student rag week when he was training young women to sing and dance and they married in 1953 when he was 24. His love of theatre, music and the performing arts was lifelong and passed on to his children. He liked nothing better than to have an audience and I expect he would have loved to be standing here today, in front of all of us. On the other hand, his sense of humility would have prevented him from declaring his many achievements and he was always happier imbibing confidence and well being in others.

A very bright man, after his physics degree he transferred to Medical School in Newcastle, to study for his MB BS in1955 where he was local President of the Medical Students Union, Vice President of the British Medical Students Association and briefly President of Durham University Students Council. He did like being in charge!

Then he worked as a house surgeon and house physician until 1957 at the RVI. He was drawn to the social, humanistic side of medicine and so it was natural that he determined to study psychiatry, working with Professor Martin Roth.

In 1961, his long awaited first child, Susan, was born and he and our mother moved to 15 Jesmond Park West where they lived for the rest of their lives. Our father then took up an appointment as a Consultant Psychiatrist at Newcastle General Hospital. He was very energetic and committed in his professional life from the beginning. Something of a pioneer, he developed important services for patients in the community, before such ideas were considered mainstream and also established training centres for people with learning disabilities, at a time when they were otherwise neglected within the health service.

A charismatic and humorous lecturer, he taught a generation of doctors and is still fondly recalled by consultants and GPs of a ‘certain age’ throughout the country. He is even more fondly remembered by his many patients, all of whom were important to him.

For a time he was a regular on "Look North" and other local TV stations when the views of a psychiatrist was required. We all remember watching and being impressed by his TV appearances as children. By then he was a consultant psychiatrist at St Nicholas Hospital and was seeing patients at the Nuffield Hospital. Subsequently he became Medical Director of the Lindisfarne Suite Private Psychiatric Unit as well as seeing patients in Middlesborough and at the BUPA Washington Hospital and in his consulting rooms at home. On retirement from the NHS he continued working full time and at one stage prepared more psychiatric medical expert reports than almost any other psychiatrist. He particularly enjoyed the drama of the court room, when acting as an expert witness. He worked full-time until the age of 77 in 2005 when he retired due to ill health, only 16 months after our mother died.

He helped so many people who were his patients over the years, sometimes treating them without charge. He had a strong sense of duty and obligation and was always hard working, passing on this strong work ethic to all his children. Aware of his far reaching influence, he actively encouraged the three of us to strike out in our own territory and forge independent lives, away from home.

He was a very enlightened family man and, as children in the 1960s and 70s, we remember him as an involved father. He got up in the night to feed us all as babies and came home for his lunch almost every day of his life. He told us stories he made up and was able to be playful and childlike, never losing touch with the little boy he once was himself. We all remember regular trips to the countryside to talk and walk and his deep love of nature. We remember him leaping into rivers in Kielder forest, hugging trees and the special family holidays we had at Tarset in Northumberland as well as Scotland and abroad.

Driving us to school every day, even through our teenage years, gave us time with him and he would often stop off at his various hospitals during that journey, to attend to patients. We remember him encouraging us, at a young age, to read the Times leader columns to him in the car on journeys to school.

He shared his love of poetry with us and his awe at the poetry of science too. He took us to the theatre, ballet and opera, which he continued to enjoy after we all left home for university and he shared his love of books, history, politics and nature with us.

Above all we will remember his conversation, his ideas, his brain, his intelligence and wisdom - and that is what has been so hard to adjust to in the last years since his dementia was diagnosed, combined with his mobility and heart problems. In a sense he slipped from us several years ago as the person we knew and it was a sad irony that such a clever psychiatrist should succumb to such a nasty disease. However, true to his character, he bore his increasing disabilities with fortitude and good humour, keeping up his spirits almost to the last, joking with his devoted carers and especially Jennifer Nicholson, his long standing secretary, whom we want to thank publicly, for her involvement, her organisation of his care and her devotion to his overall well being.

Before he became ill, our father was able to visit all three of us and was a regular attender at family christenings, first communions and confirmations around the country. We remember his 70th birthday party at Susan's house in London just after her twins were born and he enjoyed visits to Victoria in Cambridge and to me. He was proud of and loved all his children and grandchildren - Susan with her legal career, Victoria's clinical psychology practice and me, as a consultant psychiatrist - and of course the next generation, with the oldest grandchildren Rachel and Rebecca both going into law. I am sure also that he never forgot our younger sister, Diana, who died as a baby. A proud grandfather of nine he was only prevented from attending family events recently when his health worsened.

He was a deeply religious man who regularly attended church with us as children and who read widely in theology. He once stated that he had never doubted the existence of God and had prayed every day of his life. He wore his beliefs lightly on his sleeve and loathed religious bigotry, but practised as he preached and lived the life of a ‘good man’, with stoicism and altruism that was apparent even at the end of his life. He always felt that he had a personal relationship with God and often declared, "God is laughing at me!" He joked that in his afterlife, God would probably appoint him to help others to reach the 'pearly gates' - just as, in life, our father had helped so many people to emerge from their Darkness to the Light.

He became a regular attender at St Gabriel's in his later years and continued to attend church every Sunday until his health made that impossible. He was keen to be buried on the Morgan family burial plot at St Andrews cemetery and we remember him showing us, decades ago, where he intended to rest at last.

His spirit was strong and just two days before his death, he had been able to have a meaningful conversation with me. It was typical of him still to reach out and make contact even when his strength was failing. I'm sure that he was very happy that his two youngest grandchildren were with him on the final day. He was a great believer in getting on with life and looking to the future. We all felt lucky to have had the chance to say goodbye to him before he died. Although his death on 23rd May saddened us it seemed he had chosen to go and died peacefully at home in accordance with his wishes.

I think he's here with us now, laughing at us all himself and wanting us to remember him with lightheartedness and love.

By Victoria and John Morgan and Susan Singleton

Read by John Morgan

Everyone is invited back to 15 Jesmond Park West after the burial for some food and drink

Thank you to everyone for attending

Susan, Victoria and John

Pictures below