Key Players 7: Ben

This is another of my Key Players series about people that travel along and influence who I am. Somehow I managed to miss doing one of my sister when I saw her last week, so it must be that I'm saving her from another time...

Today we set off on the train to London to see my brother Ben. When we had to come back to the UK at the last minute a few weeks ago, I realised straight away that I would probably miss him and he wouldn't meet his nephew as had just left for the USA for a few weeks of mountain biking. Thankfully, he arrived back in London last night and we were able to spend the day with him and his girlfriend before our flights home tomorrow.

Ben and I have always been close, particularly since we moved to France as children and had the awkward 'settling in' period when we were making friends. Although he's three years my senior, he ended up only a year above me in school and our friend groups merged, so we ended up spending even more time together putting on parties and generally getting into trouble. We grew up playing music together (him on sax, me on cello and our Dad on piano), then we both got into the rockier side of things one Christmas when he got a bass and I got my drums. From then on we've both been in bands, both together and (more recently) apart. He is now lead vocalist and bass player in the Lincoln band Your Cat Is A Landmine, as well as being a French teacher.

His nickname, used by many, is "Beard", although you'd never know why. :-)

He is an extremely nice guy.

As you can see, he doesn't like to take life too seriously, and had a lot of fun messing around with Miles.