the obituary in the paper on saturday bore the st andrew's school motto: on and up. (i didn't know what that line was doing there until my pa, who is a st andrew's boy himself, told me. it was written by a family friend, a retired journalist, who was of st andrew's too. i suppose it must have been in latin at some point, but adapted into local languages.) and began: "though never married, he had more familes and godchildren than anyone we know. he was a man of such uncommon love and generosity..." he was that too. his love swept everyone in and they remained close to him. he had "sisters" in thailand who are devoted to him as his blood kin. he had friends in canada who thought him an unofficial family member. he got on famously with young people - his nephews and nieces, his grandnephews and grandnieces, his many godchildren, the children of his friends. we loved him for his openess and understanding, his subversive attitude towards authority, his challenging questions about your life, your decisions and your ideas. he liked it if you were cheeky back, and i was. we trusted him too, and his judgement. parents sometimes appealed to him to change their children's minds, knowing that if they would listen to someone it would be him, and children respected him all the more because he always refused these undertakngs. "you make up your own mind," he would say. everything was a test around him. the first time i had met him, when i was 13, or was it 14, it was at his then-residence in outram. let's go out to eat, he said, and then turned to me. make the reservations, he said. me? i said, startled. i had never done it before and i am sure he knew it and wanted to see if i would be unnerved. i looked up the number in a phonebook, called the place and made a reservation for seven while they all watched me. i'm sure i failed on the count of practised smoothness and confidence, but at least i didn't decline and we did get our table. he did love food, and he taught me to how eat escargot. twenty years before that he taught my mother to eat oysters.