Special visitors, Dorcas Chapman and brother John

Dorcas and my older brother John came to visit. Dorcas and I go back to the late 1960s when she typed our early endoscopy reports at St Thomas’s Hospital in London. Happily she agreed to be my main admin support when I joined the medical staff of The Middlesex Hospital in 1973, and also supervised my private practice. She married Malcolm Chapman, a good friend and superb Radiologist, who helped me through my early efforts at ERCP (not without some pithy advice). We had a great team and some wild times. Some readers may remember the Anemos restaurant with bad food and worse wine, and tables that were not made for dancing. The only blot on our GI team efforts were on the cricket pitch. My team managed to lose every game, despite the fact that Dorc was the scorer and Malc our travelling umpire. Maybe it was because most of our team (trainees from Japan, USA and elsewhere) had never seen cricket, let alone played it. Good memories from a long time ago. We have remained good friends ever since, and were delighted that Dorcas could spend time with us on Dewees.

My older and wiser brother John also came to stay and overlapped with Dorcas. He has lived in Norway for decades, and spends most summers sailing around Scandinavia. He enjoyed our warmer weather and sea water on Dewees! An engineer by profession, he made a very useful adaptation to our beach buggy, a towing hitch to hook it behind the golf carts. We now progress rather gracefully to the beach.

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Thank you, Jo.

 

 

 

We explored Charleston together, including two restaurants that look as though they were named for us. The Cotton is indeed high at High Cotton, and Moule frites are difficult to beat at Rue de Jean   img_2162img_2145

1 thought on “Special visitors, Dorcas Chapman and brother John”

  1. Delighted to see photo of you all – a particular pleasure to see a photo of Dorcas, after so many years.
    Dorcas was a constant support & confidante in my time at the Middlesex – a font of knowledge, wisdom, humour and invaluable for a Colonial Boy, the more esoteric of English Customs & Protocol. She also helped to interpret a few tricky ERCPs.
    I remember the Anemos well, the setting for many scandalous occasions, owned by a voluble Magician, a proud member of theInternational Magic Ring. His outstanding tricks were changing good wine into undrinkable retsina, and doubling the bill, with a wave of his hand. I attribute my chronic indigestion to the Anemos food all those years ago.
    The cricket matches were indeed a disappointment, saved only by a little comic relief – a prominent radiologist in his great grandfathers whites, the Dodgy Brothers, Chapman & Whiteside, Umpiring Team, practice in the
    Lord’s nets. The surreptious inclusion of two vigorous & skilled teenage relatives were the only talent saving the team from the ignominy of an English Ashes defeat.
    They were good days, thanks Peter.

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