Silver medal

We were physically active as children growing up. My mother signed us up for swimming lessons at the local sports centre in Las Palmas, the Metropole. Along with swimming we did gymnastics too.

I learnt swimming a little later than my sisters. I think it was because I was the youngest. Or maybe it was because Sally can’t do that. I heard this a lot growing up. Who’s going to wash Sally’s hair, Sally can’t do that, who’s going to put the potatoes in the oven, Sally can’t do that. Was I that useless? One day I decided to cook custard, I loved custard. Everyone was out the house, a perfect time to teach myself how to cook. I cooked the custard, but then heard everyone coming through the door so I rushed upstairs with my pot of custard and hid it under the bed.

Not the cleverest thing to do. My mother followed the wafts of hot custard up the stairs to our bedroom and found the custard pot underneath my bed.

Anyway, back to swimming, I started lessons when I was 3 and entered my first competition aged 4. 3 boys and 2 girls at the ready. When the whistle blew we were to dive in and swim crawl from one side of the pool to the other. The whistle blew, I dived in, the deepest dive ever, right to the very bottom and then back up again to get some air before starting my strokes. I must’ve lost time because I ended up last.

What I didn’t know was that the boys were competing against each other in one group and the other girl and I were in another. She won the gold for coming first, I got the silver for coming second (last).

I’ve often told this story and just omitted the above, I say I won a silver medal for swimming age 4.

Proof right there

Me looking like a pro, post swimming race