CURIOSITIES:THERE ARE MANY people for whom a small receptacle, filled with holy water and placed just inside their front door provides spiritual inspiration before forays into the outside world.
Not in our house. Before any of us depart our small, suburban semi-d to face the slings and arrows of school or work, there is the opportunity to pay homage at the foot of a different icon - an Olympic certificate.
In 1912, at the Olympic Games in Stockholm, Albert Edward Betts from Smethwick in England's Black Country won a bronze medal as part of the Great Britain and Ireland men's gymnastics team. He was my great-grandfather.
It's been a brilliant legacy to have. Whatever our now-jaundiced view of the Olympics, with its disregard for taking principled political stands and its inefficiency in dealing with drugs cheats, the Games maintain an intoxicating aura. It's just that motto: "Citius, Altius, Fortius" - "Swifter, Higher, Stronger." Genius.
It's a useful creed, and Albert's certificate is a great way of remembering what the Olympics are really all about - giving, as they did, an ordinary man, a silversmith with a job in Birmingham's jewellery quarter, the chance to step up to the plate and earn himself the kind of glory and self-fulfilment that evades most of us for a lifetime.
It doesn't hurt that, in keeping with much Olympic paraphernalia, which is now highly collectible, Albert's certificate is an attractive Art-Deco creation. So it's cool in more ways than one.
As for his medal, well, knowing the priceless nature of his sporting haul, Albert was worried that prospective burglars would pop that in their swag bags first, so he welded it into the lid of my great-grandmother's powder-puff jar. Being a silversmith, he coated it with silver to make it blend seamlessly into its new home. Thus third became second - an instant upgrade, so to speak.
I don't have the medal . . . yet! The thinking (well, my thinking) is that the person from each generation who achieves the "swiftest, highest, strongest" sporting achievement should get it. At the moment, my grandmother, who was herself a representative swimmer, has it.
The Olympic Games were not held in 1916 because of the the First World War. Albert kept training, though, and was in the British gymnastics team that finished in fifth place at the Games in Antwerp in 1920. He didn't make the next Olympics. On February 20th, 1924, he died of a brain haemorrhage. He was 35.
Anthea McTeirnan