One year ago today, I was up in London with my youngest child, Owen, waiting for the start of the Greatest Team Parade, despite having arrived four hours early. But it guaranteed us an amazing spot at the start of the route to see the athletes go by. Nearly one year later, I decided to take Matthew to the National Paralympic Day at Olympic Park to meet the paralympians who had amazed and inspired us!
On arrival, having had to walk for about to 15 minutes or so, we immediately saw a group of paralympians posing for press photographers. We quickly headed over to get a shot of them and got the chance to meet the lovely Olivia Breen. Mattie went all shy and refused to have a photo with her.
As we did not have tickets for the Copper Box, due to finding out about the event far too late to be able to get them, we headed over to the stall area to see what was about. We ended up spending most of our time there going back and forth between the Paralympics GB Tent, where there were signings with different athletes every hour. Mattie was quite shy meeting them to begin with but by the end, he ended up being very confident and a little gobby!
One of our favourite things we found was the Luminarium. It was this huge blow up tent, which each section beautifully lit in different ways. To me and Mattie, it was this huge and ridiculously brilliant sensory tent, which Mattie fell in love with immediately. He had so much fun in there and was so happy that it became incredibly hard to get him out, but eventually after bribing with him with me offering to buy him an ice cream, he agreed to come out! This tent is amazing and has made me want to have the chance to create a sensory room for Mattie, if he ever gets his own bedroom.
Between one of the signings, we headed over the bridge to sit and eat our lunch, when we spotted a huge crowd heading past us. It turned out to be Boris Johnson, a number of paralympians and a group of press photographers. We headed over to see what was going on and when the chance presented itself, we got the chance to meet Hannah Cockcroft, Sophie Christiansen and Will Bayley. Hannah was absolutely lovely and was so patient while waiting for Mattie to take my photo with her, especially as he accidentally turned the camera off! I also told her that my husband fancied her, which she laughed at (the husband is not happy I told her though).
I am not going to list the names of those we met, because I could not for the life of remember who each and every one of them were, but they were all so nice, offering us chances to hold or even wear their medals from London 2012 and one had even brought their medal they won in Lyon this year. The final one we met was the person I think everyone wanted to meet and the one of the main reasons we went, David Weir. It was a big deal for us, not because we had cheered him on but because he is the local boy. David lives not far from us and I grew up in the same town as him. When we met him and told him that, the journalist sat next to him immediately asked to interview me to which I agreed. I told him how proud I was that a local boy had done so well! David ended being the one person I did not need coax Mattie to have a photo with!
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