I love the word brilliant. It sums up so many things: brilliant white teeth in a commercial smile; stars, diamonds, and all things precious; and I can’t hear it without being transported to long car journeys through France, with The Cowgirl shouting “Have a banana,” and The Paleontologist responding “What the Hell is going on?!”*

This morning, brilliant meant driving to work, straight into the most glorious, icy cold winter morning sky. I was going to stop and take a picture, but I was running late (of course), and my co-ordination is pretty bad at the best of times, so I decided not to take a picture through the windscreen after all.

This evening, brilliant meant driving home from work into an equally glorious, deep and mysterious winter night. It evolved from deep, deep blue, though a variety of colours too close to name, to pure black. I even arrived home early enough to be there before the children, and have two whole minutes to wolf down a Club and take one shoe off before they started ringing on the door bell like an axe murderer was after them, shrieking with joy because, for once, Mummy was home first…

This afternoon, brilliant meant sitting in a classroom with three Level 1 English students, taking a Speaking and Listening exam. They were all adults. None of them were born in this country. All of them have stories to tell – which they never tell, but keep bottled up inside – that would make me weep if I knew all the details. Yet there they were, talking about the lessons that can be learned from the Holocaust. They had been set the task of discussing whether it could happen again, and what did they say? “We can’t change others’ minds, but we can change our minds. Be happy with what we have.” “It all comes down to talking more in society. If we think they are wrong, we need to say so. We have a right to choose our government.” “We need to understand humanity.”

Today, brilliant meant looking at myself in the mirror, and realising that all these experiences, these moments of beauty and pride and absolute chaos, these moments are what life is made of. These are the good bits of life, the bits that should be enjoyed; but I for one race through them instead, looking always on to the next thing, the next job, the next item on the to do list. I looked at my children, The Paleontologist in particular, and realised that I am passing the same habits on to her. I looked at us all, and acknowledged that we are not perfect. For me, that is a pretty huge thing to be OK with. I’d never want other people to strive to be perfect – that would be crazy, and very very dull – but me, I should be perfect. Obviously. But today, I knew that we were not perfect, and we would never be perfect.

None of us are perfect. And we are brilliant.

*For those of you who have absolutely no idea what I am talking about (which, I’m aware, will probably be everyone) there is a radio series called Cabin Pressure, which is both hilarious and, somehow, just about appropriate for family car journeys. One character, Arthur, is spectacularly incompetant, but has a heart of pure generosity. He responds to everything, particularly the things he does not understand (and there are many things that fall into that category), with “Brilliant!” If you are also trying to do the environmentally friendly thing of not flying, and then messing it up slightly by driving a diesel car half way across a pretty large country, I highly recommend this as something to keep you all entertained.