Awards.

I took this photo for a friend's little boy (incidentally the boy who modelled the piano accordion so wonderfully) who got his Puffin award yesterday for swimming a length without armbands. I wanted to show him that those achievements you make as a child add up, and stay with you for the rest of your life, as has my very small swimming costume!
I never got a Puffin award, although my friends did. I got the "I Can Swim" award instead. I never knew whether this was because I was much awesomer than my friends at swimming (unlikely) or whether it was something to do with my dogged determination that I could swim just fine and didn't need armbands thank you very much, which led to me trying to walk across the bottom of the little pool at West View Leisure Centre in Ribbleton whilst Mrs Ross the dinner lady tried to pull me back up to the surface.
In September, I will once again be taking my class swimming, but this year, at the local high school's new pool, rather than the council leisure centre. We never got sew-on badges at the leisure centre, I wonder if that's something we could look into at the new pool. That said, my class don't wear the regulation blue Speedo suit to sew them on to, but there's always towels...