On being brilliant.

"This is my granddaughter," my grandfather told him, "and she's brilliant!"

"That's nice," I thought, my brain flicking to an ad about milk that was on TV at the time.

I'm pretty sure he didn't mean 'brilliant' like milk is meant to be brilliant, like 'great'; rather he meant 'clever', which I was (so long as we are talking, like, academic intelligence, and not anything more useful).

He has ten grandchildren, of all of whom he was immensely proud, all wonderful human beings and many of them high-flyers (think architect, PhD in astronomy, etc.). But perhaps my proximity and tendency to share (show off) every award I got at school, made him unavoidably more aware of my latest academic achievement. 

My granddad was obviously brilliant himself, though he never would have said so. He grew up in poverty in the tenement slums of Ancoats, Manchester; he had to share a bed with his brothers (he had six siblings). He was disabled as a child (a shard of pottery in the eye so he wore a glass eye for the remainder of his life; it did at least save him from active duty in WW2, meaning he served as a clerk and survived, unlike his closest brother Bill who was killed in action as a stretcher-bearer age 23). He was made to leave school at 13 to get a job, without even getting his school leaving certificate. Despite all these disadvantages, he worked a good steady job with Shell and supported his family of seven, went to night school, read important literature, played chess at a high level, cycled, swam, kept amazing daily diaries, and sustained a marriage for over 60 years to my very lovely grandma, which I think was not always easy. When his youngest child reached 15 (and I imagine life was becoming a little more civilised for my grandparents), I was born, and not long after that Mum and I moved to Manchester and he found himself back dealing with a small person. We recently read his diaries, and in 1987-8 he seemed to take me to the park and library pretty much five days a week, every week. I have so very many fond memories of walking to school with him and his dog, Tina, and then his entertaining me after school with 'some sums', lame magic tricks with elastic bands on his fingers, and stories about life 'in the olden days' (as it seemed to me).

He was a brilliant man in both senses of the word (as in, both great and clever) and when he died in 2014 I had none of the complex and conflicting emotions that I've seen others experience when they go through a bereavement - just the lovely satisfaction of having had such a wonderful man so involved in my life for thirty years, and knowing he was safely with Jesus now. I am forever grateful that Mike agreed to drive me and two-week-old Son 2 and not-yet-two-year-old Son 1 up to see him one last time just before he died, so he got to meet Son 2. And when I had twinges of sadness when we had Son 3 and I couldn't introduce him to my grandparents, I reminded myself, "They know, all right, and they are undoubtedly DELIGHTED!" The boys all know who their Great-granddad George and Great-grandma Sheila are, and how special they were, and recognise them in photos. 

But I digress from my own brilliance...

Glinda sings to Elphaba that she will give her a makeover so that Elphaba will "hang with the right cohorts... be good at sports... know the slang you've got to know." I could've done with a LOT of help in those areas. But I could pass tests at school. Like the 11+ test so I went to grammar school; and GCSEs and A-levels and AEs all with flawless grades; plus I got a nice 'top of the country' letter for my A-level English. And this was apparently enough to get me into Cambridge by the back door, and then onto Oxford by accident. (More on this here: https://sarahhadfi.wixsite.com/website/post/on-decisions .)

At my first school in Hertfordshire, I'd very occasionally mention my credentials (it makes for a nice bunch of letters after my name when asked to, for example, write a letter in support of something for a sixth form student) and some students would look slightly impressed and ask, "Why are you just a teacher, then?"

"Just a teacher?" I'd scoff. "I love being a teacher."

My own boys despair of my lack of understanding of Minecraft or how slow I am at using the Firestick, so I've recently tried to communicate some of my academic achievements. 

"Wow, Mum, you should, like, try to do something. Like be a YouTuber."

Funny now the highest aspiration of the younger generation is being a YouTuber. Maybe I could consider posting rubbish videos of what I feed my children or do a dance whilst showing off different outfits, but it would clearly all be dreadful, like actually anti-aspirational. And dreadfully vacuous. Mr Bruff (English teacher YouTuber) is my actual hero (my students accuse me, "Are you, like, in love with him or something, because you're always setting his videos for homework?") but he is a dude (in my definition of one) and has sufficiently cornered the GCSE English market with really helpful revision videos, that I am happy to leave him to it. Along with Mr Salles. (Not Mr Everything English - he is a disaster who says in his "Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde" plot summary video that they find Jekyll's dead body (they DON'T - that is the WHOLE ACTUAL POINT) and literally changed the way GCSE exam boards mark creative writing after he told one cohort to ALL WRITE THE SAME STORY which is blatantly cheating and despicable behaviour, and if I'm ranting about this here you should see me rant and warn students off him in the classroom. And then they laugh at me and watch him anyway.)

Anyway, getting into good universities means you get to meet some obviously brilliant (clever) people. In the venn diagram of top intelligence and ballroom dancing, there is a surprisingly large overlap. Nearly all the men I danced with were astonishing - think PhDs in astrophysics; University Challenge winners; one man, Alex, solved an 'unsolvable' jigsaw puzzle called 'Eternity' and won £1 million  https://www.theguardian.com/g2/story/0,,389802,00.html. They were very tolerant of me and my lack of common knowledge and sense, and patiently explained what it was they were talking about, and repeatedly fixed my broken bike lights with paper clips and pennies so I could cycle home safely. 

Going to Cambridge meant I got to meet the friends I did, including Mike, who did teacher training at my college, and then won me over whilst advising me on my own teacher training interview. He is, quite obviously, brilliant. Brilliant, like talented, like an amazing musician, who literally toured the world in his youth, then studied at the RNCM (a music conservatoire) before mostly hanging up his instruments to work low paid jobs first at a charity, then a church, then going into teaching. On the rare occasions we watch a concert or something, he scans the programme for the names of musicians he used to play with at college and university, and I'm like, "Oh yeah, you were meant to be a professional musician!" But also brilliant as in really admirable in lots of other ways, like scoring highly in a hypothetical Adverse Childhood Experience test, and still being the wonderful, skillful, empathetic person he is. I trust his instincts and his people-reading abilities more than any other person I know. And that's a lot more useful than being good at passing tests (which he was also really very good at too, despite school moves and a troubled childhood). And because I currently work with him (again), I get to see how brilliant he is at his job (Assistant Headteacher, in charge of student welfare) and the hard and worthwhile work he does for the sake of the school community, and bask in the reflected glow of his glory. 

Of course, I'm biased, but I think our boys are fairly brilliant too - fantastic boys in all sorts of different ways (which they probably wouldn't like me to share too much about here), and I am very very grateful for and content with my brilliant family.

And I'm sure their great-granddad is very proud of them too. 

Another meaning of the word 'brilliant' is bright, as in, brilliant sunshine. One person who stood out to me as being shiny-brilliant was a lady I worked with for just a fortnight one Easter when I was a student; she was at North Trafford College and I was her temporary support worker. She had cerebral palsy, epilepsy, and learning difficulties, she knew she was life-limited, she was unfailingly cheerful with a radiant smile, and her love of Jesus shone out of her. She loved God and she loved her church, which she told me all about, and when I found out she died shortly thereafter, I thought what a celebration they must have held for her for such a fantastic life.

If you happen to be born book-clever (or, I'd imagine, say, wealthy, or beautiful) it is no doubt a lovely blessing and some level of advantage in life. But in light of eternity? I think God has much bigger priorities, like mercy and justice.

And yes, I should probably work on the humility part.

And if you found this blog unbearably self-aggrandising, just think about the poor people who had to endure me at school, when I had even less self-awareness and -restraint.

And there are other people (like my mum) who also deserve a blog about their brilliance, but that will have to wait for another day.