In which Origami Girl reviews the Opening Ceremony

Ok, I know everyone is going to be blogging and talking about the Olympics for ever more, but please humour me. I want it to be said and recorded: I loved the opening ceremony. Ever since Beijing, which awed us all, there has been a nervous atmosphere in Britain regarding the opening ceremony. We were not particularly impressed with the handover on a London bus. It was a bit of a shambles. We were dreading making Boris Johnson the heart of the spectacle and when we head 'manufactured rain' there was some serious griping. We were sure that next to Beijing our attempt would be an embarrassment.
But the actual ceremony of last night? Won my heart for the Olympics.

Voldemort being defeated by a flock of Mary Poppins

I honestly felt like the ceremony was made just for me. I want to guide you through the ceremony via the moments that made me feel like I was quintessentially British.

Ruth-bits:

-Children's literature

Peter Pan, 101 Dalmatians, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, Mary Poppins and Harry Potter. Anyone who knows me knows my love of children's writing.  Although some people may not be aware, all of those were books first. All books I have read and loved. With Shakespeare as well I was blown away: I never expected a celebration of words in an event about sport.

-Folk music and hymns

I am very fond of traditional folk songs and loved the Irish children singing from the Giant's Causeway. It was beautiful and epic. Opening with a hymn was interesting when so few people identify as Christian these days, but I thought it was powerful and beautiful. I didn't know that Abide with Me is actually sung at many sporting matches, but I love that hymn which is enough for me.

-Rock music

I know a lot of people love rock music, but the choices were all songs I love. In particular I was delighted to hear Enola Gay by Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark. One of my favourite bands. Plus I was thinking of the Scroobius Pip line: "Who makes the best music in the world? / We do." and smiling at all the classic tunes that have come out of Britain.

-World Wars' Memorial

One of the only moments I ever feel patriotic usually is on Remembrance Sunday and Danny Boyle got me on my patriotism weak spot. I studied the First World War in great depth at A Level English, reading tons of war poetry and novels until I feel like I knew Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen. I have also been to France and Belgium to visit the memorials, have been in the trenches and placed a wreath on the Menin Gate. All this has meant the First World War is an era that feels very important to me and so I was very touched by the recognition of the world wars. I was deeply impressed that in a celebration of all things British we didn't shy away from the horrors.

-Industrial Revolution

Smelting the Olympic Rings

Unlike the world wars this is not an era I have a vast expertise on, but again, recognising the dual nature of the industrial revolution as a blight on the English Countryside and as a forging of a new future through the metaphor of smelting the Olympic rings? Incredible. It took my breath away. You can't beat a well-crafted metaphor.

-Shakespeare

The Tempest is one of my favourite Shakespeare's and the speech they chose is one of the few that I can actually recite. I by no means claim Shakespeare for my own, but in a celebration of the bard I was glad that that was the moment they chose.

-Countryside

I know that the Olympics are in fact set in London, the metropolis, not a quiet country village and as such many people felt it was an inaccurate representation. However, as someone who has lived in the countryside and enjoys a sense of historical continuity I really like the maypole and the thatched cottage, quaint and twee as they may be.

Bonus points:

-Suffragettes

-Windrush generation

-Inclusivity

-Celebration of the NHS

-Pogo-ing

-James Bond

-Mr Bean

One of the reasons I am usually not patriotic is because I associate the word with xenophobia, racism and ignorance. I associate it with a blindness to the darkness in our history and a pride in war where there should only be sadness. I hate looking on the world wars as things which were honourable or glorious. I rarely feel a pride in Britain as a whole. But all of the above? I didn't feel one ounce of hatred of exclusion in the ceremony. It was a recognition of Britain as it is -and I loved it.

In which I am wearing zebras

I have two outfit posts up to go but one was taken a week ago when it was a little cooler. I am wearing tights in those pictures and just looking at them makes me feel even warmer so for now I am doing recent sunny pictures. And yes, England just got Summer. I keep saying that I feel like I am in America. It was especially odd at the weekend when I went to my other half’s cousin’s wedding. I went with his family who, until recently, lived in Texas. We had a big car, on a very hot day and, until we got to the actual wedding which turned out to be in a quiet country village serving post-nuptials Pimms, I had to keep reminding myself that no border crossing had occurred.

I wore a pink zebra dress to the wedding. It blows my mind that I would because it goes against all the fashion beliefs of my teenage self. I have covered my thoughts on pink before, but zebras? 

It’s not that I am against zebras themselves, but animal prints. It’s not that I am militant vegan because I wear my leather boots and eat my steaks with gusto. Yet, animal prints just felt squicky. It is like wishing you had a dead zebra skin, or dead leopard. I know this isn’t a popular opinion in the fashion blogging world. So many blogs I read are like “I must have these leopard print shoes! And headscarf! And look at this little cheetah spotted handbag! I MUST HAVE ALL THE PRINTS.” I also know full well that a print is not a dead skin, but like faux fur it feels a little encouraging of those who would want dead skin. But the second reason I don’t like animal prints is they just seem tacky. I know that that’s being judgemental and tacky has all sorts of issues as a word, but there we go. My boy thinks it’s kind of weird I don’t like them because it is just another pattern, especially as I like this kind of animal print:

Toucan playsuit from New Look. I really wanted this but it has sold out.

 However the dress I wore to the wedding was a gentle Segway into embracing that style. Behold: animals on an animal print:

Yes, it is that hat again. I have been living in it for the last two weeks.

Would you look at that? Zebras on zebra stripes. Amazing.

My boy in his suit

There were lots of lovely well-dressed people at the wedding with beautiful hats and one man with suede brogues with orange soles. I was told that to go up to the man with the nice shoes and ask to photograph them would be weird and embarrassing and, as it wasn’t my family’s thing, I was good and put my camera away. I spent the rest of the night bare-foot barn dancing which is a lot more demure than taking photos of strangers to put on the internet.

In which I should be making art

I have been thinking about Art a lot. These thoughts have been mostly along the lines of I’m not good enough/I don’t do enough of it. I have been dwelling, in a fairly meloncholy way, on jealousy and a sense of failure. I used to do a lot of art in a structured way: art lessons at school, creative writing lessons or projects, running my jewellery business, or even the way my degree inspired writing. All of these creative outlets have dropped off along the way and I am really in need of a new kick. I need to make things and share things and just see how it goes.

I have lately found myself surrounded by good advice on how to do just that. I think everyone with an interest in creativity should be following Brain Pickings, one of the most beautiful blogs on the internet. It is a well of inspiration, but amongst the thoughts it reaches out with (of love, Lego and lost letters) are words about writing and making. There are so many snippets of advice about originality, audience and self-doubt.

The advice is generally: just do art.
Like Neil Gaiman says in so many ways.
Sometimes like this:
“When people come to me and say, ‘I want to be a writer. What should I do?’, I say, ‘You have to write.’ And sometimes they say, ‘I’m already doing that. What else should I do?’ I say, ‘You have to finish things.’ Because that’s where you learn from; you learn by finishing things.”
(Sometimes like this)

Like Vihart says:

 
Like Tanya Davis says:

.

I find myself humming
‘Art, art, art I want you.
Art you make it pretty hard not to.
And I’m trying hard here to follow you,
but I can’t always tell if I ought to’.

A few months ago I left a job and bought a sketchbook. For me a new sketchbook is a world of possibilities. So I wrote a couple of poems and sketched some maps, designed some Lego figures. Then that little burst of energy was gone. So I am going to do my best to take all this advice and just sit down and write. Me and the boy are going to set aside some time every week to do out Things. His with his viola and me with some writing or crafting or drawing.

 I hope it works!

In which I have found The Hat.

I always thought of myself as being a big hat-girl. I mean a person who has a lot of hats rather than that I, or the hats, are big. In fact I’m pretty small.

Anyway. At the start of university I remember a friend joking that maybe I didn’t have hair as he had only ever seen me with a hat on. Although that has changed a little (partly due to confidence switches. I used to hide my face under hats, now I am less confident about the hats themselves). I have five berets, a couple of trilbies, various summer hats, costume hats and a few posh vintage hats. Then along came the internet, specifically fashion blogs. I thought I was into berets, but I only have five different ones. Not enough! Lauren has even more! The bloggers I follow have hats like these: 

Roaslind, Clothes, Cameras and Coffee has a seeingly endless supply of vintage clothes, but I especially pine over her hats.

Lauren, Someone Like You, introduced me to the concept that I may need more than five berets

Annika, The Pineneedle Collective, wears this gorgeous hat in most of her posts at the moment. A constant reminder of how cute it is.

Across the internet I see people with the most beautiful of vintage hats, combined with the courage to wear them. I have some outlandish hats, including a vintage train driver hat, that I feel self-conscious and silly wearing them.  However I have found myself the Hat of Summer. In a charity shop I saw this beautifully bright har with blue fake flowers and a turquoise ribbon. It is exactly what I was looking for. I feel cute and colourful rather than odd and it matches my turquoise nail varnish perfectly. These things are important. I also like that I can wear an all grey outfit, pop on the hat, and I feel cheerful and interesting. 

 

On a very different note, I read a news article online recently about how keeping a blog makes you less attractive to employees. It was rather odd because the employer writing it had some strange ideas about how your blog reflected you. In one example her gave, someone had a blog about tinkering with computers, but was applying for a humanities job. The employer said he feared they would “lose him to the computer department”. How strange that as a an adult you would believe that a hobby in a different field implies incompetence. To get back on point, I have been very careful to not mention work on this blog. I have mentioned when I have been unemployed, because unemployment is an all-consuming constant state of depression and guilt. It is hard not to mention it.  However, I want to have a career at some point and so mentioning work at all is problematic, if I listen to this guy. It is not just mentioning what I do now that is an issue, but a future employer might fear that I would ‘gossip’ about them on here if I set a precedent. Yet, on the other hand what about things I am proud of and want to share? But more importantly, things I am learning and knowledge stemming from my work that is important? You see almost all the jobs I have had have been in the public sector (NGOs, charities) and so I want to share some of their work because I believe in it, whilst at the same time respecting work/home divisions. It is a tricky one.

So I have decided to just mention related stuff without making a big deal out of it when it comes up. But what do you other bloggers think about it? Do you stick to your chosen blogging topic or mention your work life?

In which Lego and Playmobil go head to head in the Olympics

So the Olympics are quickly approaching and I have not got into the spirit of the Games. I have missed the Olympic torch passing by, worried about if the opening ceremony is going to mostly feature sheep, and discussed the over-baked copyright laws and heavy-handed enforcement accompanying the spectacle.  I have been simply hoping I can escape it all with a holiday to Edinburgh.  Until now.

My local toyshop has revolutionised my Summer with this: 

 

 and this:

We have available Team GB Olympic mini-figures and Playmobil Olympic sports figures.

As I don’t have endless amounts of money, but I do have an obsession with both toy types I am going to review them in order to make that key decision: which type to collect?

 Taking into account Cost, Packaging, Inclusivity, Playability and Collectability I will score the sets and see who comes out with the gold.

 Cost

Lego £1.99

Playmobil £2.99

Playmobil is obviously more expensive, but also bigger and some of the sets contain more than one figure so they do seem very good value for money. If saving is what I am going for Lego is slightly cheaper and has less sets to collect, but I may have to buy more in order to get all of them.

Playmobil 1 Lego 1

Packaging

Lego: Like the previous mini-figure series’ the packaging all looks the same so you don’t know what you’ve got until you are home. This adds an element to surprise, but means I could end up with 5 swimmers and no archers. This always has the potential for swaps if I can persuade anyone else to join me in collecting, but in all my mini-figure collecting I have only done one swap. Lego also has a little flyer with all the figures listed and a tick box option, which is nice for collectors.

Typical minifigure mystery packaging

Playmobil:

The packages let you know what is in them. There is an action shot on the front and the back lists the contents. It means I could just get my favourite sets and never bother with the beach volleyball. 

My favourite set

Playmobil 1 Lego 1

Collectability

Lego: The Lego Olympics are unique to Britain. As we are hosting the games they have only released the sets here. Therefore, unlike the Playmobil, they are not wearing generic sports outfits, but are based on the actual Team GB kit and are official Olympics merchandise. This gives them some serious ‘collectability’ points in my eyes. After all, when Lego is from Denmark and mostly bought by Americans it would be good to feel smug about something uniquely British, and fixed to this point in time. I think I just found myself getting patriotic about Lego. And patriotism is what sporting events are about, right?

Playmobil: The Playmobil sports sets may well be available after the Olympics so there is that little bit less incentive to go get them all right now, but the four gymnast sets make a good collection in and of themselves. The Playmobil is also the only one to feature fencing, the Olympic sport I will be watching and that I sometimes participate in.

Playmobil 1 Lego 2

Inclusivity

When deciding between the two I think it is very important to refer back to an on-going mental debate I have regarding the sexism present in both manufacturers. Although I have previously mentioned Lego’s prevalent sexism, if you want to hear someone explain it more eloquently with clips from Lego adverts, Feminist Frequency does so with style, and I would recommend checking her out. It should be easy to displace with sexism in Olympics toys –both men and women participate in all events, so a fifty/fifty split in terms of gender representation and a variety of sports in the figures should be easy to accomplish.

Lego:

There are 9 figures, 3 of which are female.

Which ones are represented as women?

Horse riding, gymnastics and Taekwondo. So 2 out of 3 female figures are participating in stereotypically female sports. The martial artist feels like a token gesture. Furthermore, the women are all wearing lipstick. It is only a tiny aspect, but the introduction of make-up for the female figures feels like an unnecessary use of sexualisation and a reminder that even in plastic we are taught that women and men have very different roles.

Playmobil:

There are 15 sets.

Which ones are represented as women?

Javelin thrower, beach volleyball, gymnast on balance beam, gymnast on parallel bars, Judo competitors and swimmer.

The fencers are actually male beneath their masks, but in the advertised packaging they could be either gender.

This is where Playmobil wins hands down. You may have noted that, like Lego, there are female gymnasts. However, Playmobil actually created four gymnast sets: gymnast on rings and gymnast on pommel horse, are actually male.  The presence of four gymnast sets gives an unexpected amount of attention to a sport which was originally intended as a mere entertaining display when the Olympics were revived in 1896, and removes a gender stereotype in so doing. The javelin thrower and the Judo competitors show that including women was more than a token gesture, and a recognition that women participate in all aspects of the competition. The javelin thrower I think is particularly empowering.

 

Additional notes:

Playmobil also makes gestures towards race equality including different skin tones in their sets. However the table tennis figures seems to play on racial stereotypes rather than inclusivity which leaves me feeling a bit confused on this issue.

Lego figures are always yellow.

Playmobil 3  Lego 1

Playability

Lego:

Lego have the option of taking the figures apart and playing around with my existing toys. I could try and ignore the presence of pectorals on most of these figures and make them into a kick-ass girl team through my imagination and some head-transplants. I already own a boxer and a tennis player –with the versions available in the Olympics series I could build a tennis stadium or boxing ring and provide them with competition. Plus the gold medal accessory means anyone can be a winner. Champion Butcher! Victory Fisherman! Award-winning Statue of Liberty!

Playmobil:

These sets have some fantastic accessories. My Playmobil collection is already vast and I could pair some of these sets up nicely. Fencers against musketeers. All the gymnasts would make a great display of a competition together. The javelin would go nicely with my collection of weapons. However, whilst I have a lot of Playmobil, the sets fall into familiar categories: Medieval, Pirates, Victorian, Fantasy, Wild West, Farm and Christmas. I don’t generally have modern sets, so it is the accessories that could be combined with my existing collection.

Playmobil 1 Lego 2

Total:

Playmobil  7 Lego 7

I hate it when articles score points on a comarison piece which end up totally equal. I am suspicious that they set it up in order to be tidy. Yet no matter how many times I went through this list, I could see a balance. Perhaps that is why I am struggling with this decision. Perhaps, I should ignore issues of gender and just go with the Lego (but maybe buy the Playmobil fencers anyway). On the other hand I find myself challenging the sexism in toys, but continuing to buy into it by purchasing them regardless. When I have a reading list of blogs which criticise Lego for its problematic Friends series and have written to Playmobil about their gender inequality, am I changing anything by collecting toys regardless. What do you think?

Is anyone else going to join me in collecting Olympic toys this summer?

---

For interesting stories about politics, controvosy and the Olympics I recommend: http://politicsandolympics.tumblr.com/