Keith Howard (Wolseley 1966 - 1973) informed me of the passing of his friend Peter recently and asked me to share his memories with you.

Peter and I were in different houses for all of our seven years at DYRMS so it was only in the sixth-form, studying A-level sciences together and as school prefects (Peter was Head of Wellington), that we really came to know each other and become friends. That friendship might easily have run its course in July 1973 but, by coincidence, we both stumped up at Leeds University that autumn (he initially studied Medicine before switching to Zoology) and then again at Birmingham University in 1978 when we were both postgrads in the Medical School, Peter in the Anatomy Department. In Leeds we shared student accommodation with others, and in Birmingham we shared a flat in Moseley for the two years I was there. Later I was best man at his wedding to Janet, whom he’d met at Birmingham, and later still we lived not too far apart in west London. Peter and I would meet occasionally, along with another housemate from the Leeds days, to sink a few pints of London Pride in The Dove, Hammersmith (just downriver from the Fuller’s brewery and where the words to Rule, Britannia were, supposedly, written in an upstairs room).

Peter first became interested in computing in Birmingham when his supervisor acquired an early Hewlett-Packard desktop computer and XY plotter, and he continued working with computers thereafter, initially for British Gas where he rose to be a projects controller and later as a freelance programmer. Disenchanted with corporate life (Janet worked for Shell), the Hayballs moved north – a long way north – in the early 1990s to near Ullapool on the west coast of Scotland, where Peter worked as a computer consultant to local businesses and for four years they took in paying guests. Although we ritually exchanged Christmas cards, the distance, in effect, made strangers of us, although more recently our cards included letters that shared what had being going on in our lives. In 2013, while he and Janet were effecting their move south from Ullapool to Newcastle upon Tyne, Peter suffered a stroke which did not impact him intellectually but did make walking difficult. His mobility declined thereafter to the extent that eventually he needed a wheelchair or motor scooter for journeys of further than a few metres.

It was about 30 years since we’d last spoken when he rang me last December to say that he’d been diagnosed with colon cancer in September, that it had already metastasised to his liver when found, and that he had been given a prognosis of three to six months. He died peacefully at home, with Janet by his side, on 17 January.

RIP Peter