It’s official. My eldest daughter looked longingly at the moon on her way back from the hairdresser’s this evening, and expressed her desire to ‘give it a cuddle’.

Which leaves me just over two weeks to find some plausible lunar-alternative, or we’re going to have a very disgruntled five-year-old on our hands this Christmas.

Meanwhile, her sister has comparatively parochial designs on a road-sweeping vehicle (the giant vacuum hose attachment receiving particular acclaim).

Whilst it seems unlikely that either of the younger Gileses will be receiving their present of first choice, we have been keen to encourage the current fascination for hoovering. We have offered many, many opportunities to ensure vacuuming fulfillment.

We are hoping the domestic prowess may, in time, spread to washing, ironing, light garden maintenance and the like. That would make a wonderful Christmas present.

On Thursday (5 December), a massive storm surge was wreaking havoc along large parts of the east coast of the UK. Sea defences were breached, houses and livelihoods flooded, thousands of people evacuated. Unsurprisingly, the country’s news media were feverish, as they reported too on the Chancellor’s Autumn Statement. Until just after 9:45pm, that is.

For that is when, in a broadcast that spanned the globe, South African president Jacob Zuma announced to the world that Nelson Mandela had died. Suddenly it was as if nothing else mattered.

The passing away of any other 95 year old may have gone unreported, unnoticed to all but his closest family. But this was no ordinary man.

I remember watching similarly wall-to-wall news coverage when Mandela was released from prison in 1990. That he went on to be South Africa’s first black president represented an incredible social and political change, and the downfall of the abhorrent and inherently unjust system of apartheid.

But Mandela was not a universally loved figure. Biographer Anthony Sampson refers to the mythology that surrounded him, turning him ‘a secular saint’ and which was ‘so powerful that it blurs the realities’. Certainly, many of the tributes from commentators over the last few days have been almost too glowing. Mark Steel has blogged about this eloquently, wondering if it was ‘like this 2000 years ago when Jesus died’.

Something about this pseudo-veneration grates. As it did when Margaret Thatcher died (and DJ wags were banned from playing certain Wizard of Oz numbers). As it did when Diana, Princess of Wales, left this mortal coil.

Freud (another more erudite mind than mine) puts it thus: ‘We assume a special attitude towards the dead, something almost like admiration for one who has accomplished a very difficult feat. We suspend criticism of him, overlooking whatever wrongs he may have done.’

Why do we feel the need to sanitise or polish up a recently-deceased person’s CV? Is it simply respect? Or is it actually because we don’t like talking about death very much, and need something ‘nice’ to paper over the cracks? Can it be socially acceptable to strike a balance?

Madiba – for all his faults – achieved great things, changed a good number of lives for the better and, crucially, argued cogently and authentically for forgiveness. And that’s something we all need.