Kids, Craft and Chaos

A couple of weeks ago as the Paralympics were gearing up I decided to find out more about a Paralympian that I've always found fascinating- Oscar Pistorius. I had followed his career in a very general way over the years, I'd always read any article about him I came across and absorbed the information. It also hadn't passed by my notice that he wasn't a bad looker either. I'd loved seeing him perform at the Olympics already.

I watched the documentary on him on C4 (It may become available on 4OD again), I had found his autobiography on the Great Library Adventure. It was completely enthralling and I wrote about it here. I was even more interested in finding out more about this amazing athlete. I can assure you if you Google (other search engines are available) Oscar Pistorius some very, very, very attractive images appear -in fact just check out his own website but I partularly like the Clarke Kent glasses style he rocked in the 200m medal ceremony and the gold Oakley bedecked style for the 400m final.

{unsure of original souce but it's his current Twitter photo}

I found myself discussing him a lot after all of the hoo-ha after his ill-timed comments after losing to Alan Olivera in the 200m. There were a lot of column inches written about, arguably, the most famous Paralympian of all time. In my opinion, his timing was awful and seemed petulant and a "toys out the pram" moment  but, it did create the debate that perhaps is required since subsequent athletes have agreed with his issues. I'm interested to see how it turns out. It certainly made the rest of the Paralympics unmissable viewing. I really feel that he did work so hard for the rest of the Paralympics to make up for the outburst through his tweets and interviews with the press, let's face it, we've all said things in the heat of the moment we regret, it's just that our words don't end up around the world instantly. The best way of judging people is often by how they are perceived by their peers and I found so many athletes supporting him a sign that it was such an out of character outburst.  And the tension for the relay and the 400m?  Unbelievable (and I hope you read that in the voice of Bert LeClos) one of the greatest sporting events ever, pure theatre.

And so my interest was sparked beyond the usual level to a serious interest, a fascination and possibly even a little crush, a crush that my husband finds quite funny (he knows that really, who else would have me?).

It's at this point things go from me being a little interested in a famous athlete and thinking he is hot with a capital H to it becoming ridiculous, all with very little input from me and a lot from Kateri via the Royal Mail. Now when it comes to slightly silly post Kateri has good previous form. Can I remind you of the Large Letter, the No Message in a Bottle, and numerous other things I don't even blog about.

I guess I must have done quite a lot of talking about Mr Pistorious at our Lone planning meeting since it was early last week that I came home from work to find a squashy brown envelope containing not one but 5 separate badges of my new hero. Along with a Mark Cavendish (another man who is ridiculously attractive) badge for Jenn (one half of the sanity that I have at work- also can I point out that Jenn may perhaps have had a helping hand in fanning the flames of this... just sayin').

So now I have two on my desk at work, two on my flamingo bag I use when my handbag-isn't-big-enough-for-all-the-stuff-i-need-to-carry and a spare for adorning clothing at appropriate junctures (like at the point I'm taking the photo). Perfect. I was more than happy with these, they were silly, fun and not at all excessive.

Only this morning I discovered that this was not the end of the Oscar paraphanalia. I got a sweet little card with some fabric badges to sew onto my camp blanket. I laughed. These were brilliant. I thought that was the best post I'd had that week (fabric badges easily outrank pin ones in Guiding circles).

See, aren't they sweet.

Then we opened the back door to find two large envelopes left by the postman. Now, I already had silly mail. Why would this be more silly mail?  Oh how foolish of me. I chose to open the one emblazoned with the instruction DO NOT BEND. Oh. My. Goodness:

An actual cardboard little Oscar Pistorius. Genius. Absolutely ridiculous. What on earth would I do with it? I could not stop laughing but I loved it. (I particularly loved the "Insert Oscar Here" instructional diagram.

I assumed that the other parcel must be from someone else. Serously, what else could she have sent me? Ha! I think I opened the mail in the right order or silliness. I found this:

And it wasn't empty either. Kateri had sourced a dozen pages of Oscar related articles, photographs and quotes. It's brilliant. I'm sure there are other advantages to working in a library but the fact that you can make a scrapbook on a topical subject in a matter of hours is one of the best I can think of right now.

It's not something that I would ever have even considered making these days, I had gone as far as pinning some pictures on Pinterest but an actual Scrapbook. How 1990's of her. So now if you come into my house it looks like I have an unhealthy-why-isn't-there-a-restraining-order-on-you obsession with Oscar Pistorious. And actually, it's a pretty nice thing to have, like I might have said the man is not unattractive (oh that smile, could actually melt a stone heart never mind his seriously nice, erm, physique)

In all seriousness, I have put the little standing Oscar up, in the living room behind a picture of mum and Charlotte after the 2010 Pedal for Scotland event. Now when I look in that corner I see inspiration. I see strength and self-belief and a whole lot of "if you put the hard work in and you believe in yourself, then you can do whatever you want to do" (Oscar Pistorius) staring back at me. For all its silliness these are brilliant gifts and I think I have the best BFF in the world, and no you can't have her, I need crazy post, and possibly more Oscar Pistorius.

So, what do you reckon- am I obsessed?