LETTER: One day too many as a tiger

From Mr Keith Bradbrook

Sir: I, like millions of other people in Britain and around the world, mourn the apparent death of Alison Hargreaves, the mountain climber, on K2. Alison must have been a very brave and talented person.

I wonder, though, if her husband's Tibetan quotation featured on the Independent's front page today (18 August) might be hollow words for the two young children Alison has tragically left behind.

Perhaps they might not think "it is better to have lived one day as a tiger than a thousand years as a sheep", but wish to heaven they still had a mum instead.

At the tender age of six and four, could they afford to have a mountaineering mother, however courageous? Was Alison's "day as a tiger" not on Everest a little while ago, and seeking another "day" on K2 too high a risk for her children to be asked to take?

Yours faithfully,

Keith Bradbrook

Wilmington,

Kent

18 August