In 1965, after completing the study on lung cancer and bronchitis in Northern Ireland, I was invited to report the results of the study at a joint meeting of the Ulster Medical Society and the British Medical Association at the Whitla Hall in Belfast. Before the meeting I was the guest of honour at a dinner attended by about 200 Irish and British doctors. Just before the dinner, Graham Bull, professor of medicine at Queen's University, Belfast, announced without warning to the assembled guests: ‘Geoffrey Dean, our distinguished guest speaker, will now say grace for us in Afrikaans.’ Fortunately, when I was first in South Africa in 1947 and staying with Detective Sergeant Ferreira, we used to say grace in High Dutch and I remembered the prayer: ‘Lieve Here, laat ons ete en nimmer U verhete’ – ‘Dear Lord, let us eat and never forget thee.’

After completing the Northern Ireland and Teesside studies, I returned to my practice in Port Elizabeth. Maria and I now rented a house in town. My eldest son, John, had started to study physics at Rhodes University, while Jenny and Michael were still at boarding school in Grahamstown.

In October 1964 the first child of my marriage to Maria was born. He was a fine boy and we named him Gordon Richard, Gordon after my cousin, who had been killed flying in Bomber Command in 1943, and Richard after my father. Eighteen months later we had a baby daughter, whom we named Elizabeth for many reasons: Port Elizabeth, Elizabeth House, my mother's favourite aunt, Elizabeth Murphy, and Maria's best friend, Elizabeth (Bettina) Tessler.

During the long school summer holidays John, Jennifer and Michael spent some of the time with us at Lauries Bay, where there was a large house and two cottages. We had rented one of the cottages to a wild Irishman, Michael Davern, and his very beautiful wife, Eithne. Eithne wrote ‘Aisling’ on the outer wall of the cottage with large seashells. Aisling means a ‘dream’ in the Irish language.