Diccon Adams (1945 - 2007)
Diccon's daughter Katie remembers popular Chiswick man
My father, Diccon Adams, was born in Northampton 1945 and spent the early years of his childhood in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka). I remember when I travelled abroad I was thinking of visiting Sri Lanka and emailed Dad to ask him about his experiences there as a child; “We had a phone which you turned a handle to attract the attention of the local switchboard operator (a woman sitting in little more than a hut somewhere in the centre of village in the valley) and one would ask to be put through to names if they were local or numbers for long distance.
"When I was about 5 I asked to be put through to "Browns", a garage and occasional car sales company in Hatton; I had seen a Triumph Mayflower there and thought it was rather grand. I asked them to deliver it. Whoever answered the phone was very polite and said all the right things ... but the car never arrived. Even then I was not really surprised!”
I never did make it there since the political situation had got a bit dire again but we had always planned to go as a family when things were calmer to re-trace Dad’s roots there. I hope we still can as I know Dad would have loved it.
Aged 9, Diccon returned to the UK and was educated in Suffolk at Ipswich School. He trained as an architect after finishing school and worked successfully for a number of years until the recession in the 1990s which did no favours to small architectural practices such as his. He became a Planning Supervisor Consultant working freelance and mixing this up with all manner of other jobs.
At the age of 25, Diccon met and married his wife Diana within six months of meeting at an ice rink of all places, through mutual friends. Their friends joked that it must be a shotgun wedding, but it was seven years later that they had me, their first child and four years after that their son arrived. Diccon and Diana celebrated their 36th Wedding Anniversary in October 2006.
Diccon and Diana first moved to Chiswick in 1978, buying the family home when Diana was heavily pregnant with their first child and have been there ever since. Diccon loved living in Chiswick and would take us as children to the playgrounds and tennis courts around the Back Common.
Diccon was always interested in cars and just this Christmas I bought him a tee shirt with the words “I am the Stig” as he was a huge fan of Jeremy Clarkson and the BBC’s Top Gear programme. As a younger man, Diccon was a very talented tennis player and still managed to beat both me and my brother at a game we played while holidaying in France last year, despite not having played for years. He also loved music; the blues, rock ‘n roll and bluegrass being among his favourites. I remember as a young child at bath time having Dad sat on the toilet (lid down!) strumming away on his acoustic guitar while I splashed around.
Diccon was well educated, intelligent with a distinct wry humour and a taste for rubbish jokes that lives on in his children. He was a mine of information and we would joke that one of his hobbies was collecting useful/useless knowledge!
Diccon Adams was diagnosed with cancer on 11th January 2007 and died peacefully on 7th February 2007. He leaves behind his mother, wife, daughter and son. His passing has been a shock to all the family and we are devastated to lose him. He was loving, generous and a strong and feisty character determined to fight through the cancer. Speaking of the treatment he would need and taking the words of Mastermind host Magnus Magnusson he told us, “I’ve started so I’ll finish”. In the end though he was accepting of his fate and gathered his family around to say goodbye. His passing was peaceful and surrounded by family. For those small mercies, we must be grateful.
The family have been overwhelmed with the response from Chiswick W4 members and would like to thank you all for your kind words. To know that he was held in such high regard by so many people has been a comfort to us in this difficult time.
We would like to celebrate his life rather than mourn his death and all are welcome to attend his funeral. The funeral is taking place at 4pm on Monday 19th February at Mortlake Crematorium. No flowers please, donations to Macmillan Cancer Support instead.
Thank you.
Katie Adams
February 14, 2007
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