It’s funny how things come
back to you.
In my last blog, I
mentioned a memory of having been a runner-up in a Cadbury essay writing
competition when I was eight. The fact that I didn’t win still weighs heavily
on my heart (yes, I am that competitive). A Facebook friend joined in, having
remembered that she, too, won a prize.
Like her, I can’t quite
recall if it was chocolates or biscuits, although I do remember boycotting
Cadbury for some time, and my taste for chocolate never returned. To this day,
I can make a Flake last six months (You see, Cadbury? I can be mean like that.
Your loss).
I have never been a good
loser and have no idea where that comes from. My parents were not over-pushy
and did not punish me if I came home without the trophy for winning the egg and
spoon race on school Sports Day (I, by the way, was in my bedroom, ready to
commit hara-kiri at the humiliation of not coming first).
Most of my youth’s social
activities centred on ballroom dancing, where competitiveness was all. I still
have the photo of my first competition, in which, with my partner Kerry (girls
could dance with each other until the age of 12), I am holding a medal. For
sixth place. Sixth place! Are you serious? Kerry had to go. I then partnered Janette and
we won everything. My smiles could have eclipsed planets.
When I was clearing out my
Cardiff house last year, I came across a book called Girls’ Stories that my
grandmother had given me around the same I lost the Cadbury writing competition
(did I mention that?). The inscription is a reward for something (certainly not
being a runner-up), though I can’t quite remember now, as it’s in storage.
But anyway, what’s
interesting is that every single girl in the book is a winner. Bullied at
school? Girl rises above it and moves on to friends in pastures new, having
learned a valuable lesson. Would-be jockey? Against all odds, she wins the
local gymkhana. The lesson in every story is that any girl can do anything, be
anyone, achieve anything.
I must have believed it.
Was that where the seeds of
my competitiveness were sown?
Or was I born with a gene
that makes the ache of losing inevitable?
That’s why I was so
impressed with Jordan Horowitz during last week’s Oscars (see previous blog).
To be holding that trophy in his hand and be able to hand it over so graciously
when he discovered there had been a mistake . . . would that I were able to
acquire an atom of his magnanimity.
Personally, I would have
been in jail very quickly, leaving Jessica Fletcher pondering an Oscar
statuette embedded in someone’s skull.
I was brought up in
education with the Henry Grantland Rice adage: "For when the
One Great Scorer comes/ To mark against your name/He writes – not that you won
or lost/ But how you played the Game.”
Well, stuff
that for a bunch of soldiers.
Much as
my mother tried to foist the spirit of the poem upon me, along with Rudyard
Kipling’s If, I was going to reach for those stars if I had to break my back
doing so.
That was
never encouraged in my secondary school. I once scored three goals in hockey
and I remember Mrs Davies sternly telling me: “It never pays to be too
competitive in life.” Apparently, she was very upset when I told the story on
the radio three decades later.
Back of
the net, Mrs Davies!
I recall
another teacher throwing my satchel (complete with flask of soup my mother had
lovingly prepared) over a balcony because it was about three inches from where
it should have been. “I strongly object,” I informed her, only to be ushered
aside and told: “It never pays to strongly object to anything in life.”
Ah, so
many “It never pays” lessons. It’s just a pity those teachers hadn’t applied
the same ones to the many teachers involved with pupils in that school,
because, let me tell you, it never pays to be the victim of a powerful man
abusing his position and devastating the lives of vulnerable schoolgirls. But
when that Great Scorer comes to write against their names . . .
Maybe it
was the knowledge that I was a writer – I never doubted it – that instilled the
confidence and surety; and yet, as everyone who knows me would attest, I have
been wracked with personal insecurities all my life. Maybe it was those that
sharpened the edge of competitiveness?
I was
never part of the “in” crowd – maybe that, too, had something to do with it?
But as I
sit now, on a sunny spring day in New York City, overlooking the Hudson, I
count so many blessings: most of all, my family and friends - because, without
them, I wouldn’t have made it this far.
And,
because of them and their love and support, I will always feel like life’s
luckiest and biggest winner.