Alchemy - inventing the big brother I never had

My WIP is a bit of a monster at the moment and I'm fighting to get it to fall into place properly. It's my own fault. I've been writing chapters as the muse has presented them - not in the order they will finally take in the book. I'm realising that I have described a lot of surroundings that are season-dependent and might be faced with cutting the heads off a few chapters and stitching them to earlier or later events. Ho hum.

Meanwhile, this book will have a cast of thousands (well - lots anyway) and I'm enjoying inventing them - including the big brother I never had in real life but always wanted.

He wanted to be a scientist and I can remember him clearly in his white laboratory coat. One of his favourite possessions was a chemistry set and he would carry out smelly experiments in the kitchen at weekends with lots of liquids that frothed and popped and changed colour when he mixed them. Sometimes he would let me watch, but I could never join in because he insisted that safety was important and I did not have a proper coat like his.  His real love was mechanics though, and he would take things apart to see how they worked, then sit for hours putting everything back together just to prove that he could. He wanted to show everyone, including himself, that he understood what was going on behind the front of things. He was a bit like that with people too, because he could always see straight through me. There was no fooling him about anything and he often unravelled my teenage troubles for me, with his calm and wise view of the world.