FIRST

Throughout my life I have had an innate ability to come second.

When I look back through my mind’s memory box, it is littered with second class certificates, medals, trophies and memories. I am the runner up, the silver medallist, not a loser but not a winner. I am second.

In my large, suburban primary school built after the war to house 500 kids, herded from across the south west Lancashire plain, there were 125 in each year, graded from 1 to 125. In years 1, 2, 3 and 4 somehow... I always came second.

As a dancer, a brownie, a tennis player, an athlete, a swimmer, a pony club member … I was second.

Even at university studying law at the socialist republic of South Yorkshire, in the naïve yet persistent belief I could change the world, before I dropped out, I was second.

My innate second superpower seems to have consciously or unconsciously been an ability to do enough to prove my own prowess to myself, my parents and my peers but not enough to put the attention, the heat or the pressure on me.

Yet a remarkable thing happened during lockdown, I studied for an MA, Text and Performance at RADA and broke the habit of a lifetime.

I am now first.

That is a distinction.

#change #win #women