Embracing eccentricity
I love this picture. My brother David painted it and it somehow encapsulates so much of who and what he was. We book-ended the family, he and I. 12 years between us and two siblings in between, but as a tiny child it was 'Dabid' I turned to for the maternal warmth which I seldom seemed to find in my mother. He taught me to play chess when I was 3, making few allowances for my age. I remember saying, "You can't take my king!" to which he replied, "I can if you make a bloody stupid move like that!" I had my first piano lessons from him at around the same age, and he encouraged me in my precocious love of reading. I simply adored him and even though he was a teenager pretty soon after I arrived, he always made time for me, always loved and accepted me, didn't mind me curling up and listening to his hours of piano practice or sniffing his second hand maths books, and had a way of looking right into me that made me feel understood. I think it's fair...