Anyone who's been reading this blog regularly will know having the flag itself made has been an ordeal. I put together an original design on a green & white background, using images of Oscar & logo's of the charities involved. It proved too complex for our flag manufacturer, who admitted defeat about 2 weeks ago. They put me in touch with another company, a wholesale company who don't usually deal with the public, as they had more manpower & should be better placed to help us (I'm not going to use the names of these companies, until we've resolved our issues).
This company agreed a more basic design of one white horizontal stripe on a green background, with simply "The Oscar Knox Appeal" across it in large black lettering, with a smaller "Team Oscar" in white in the bottom right hand corner. They agreed it would be ready for dispatch on Monday & we should receive it by Wednesday. I planned on taking it along to Goodison on Wednesday night, but was prepared for it to not be ready in time. When it didn't arrive yesterday, a little bit of worry set in. I e-mailed the company, but no reply. This morning, I called them first thing. No answer. Numerous (increasingly anxious) e-mails & phonecalls later & I heard nothing. The postman came & went & no sign. Sheer panic set in. One more post window before Man City v Everton tomorrow, for the 'trial run'. More importantly, one more post window before the Hibs-Hearts derby. The flag may well turn up on Monday then, but if it wasn't in one ground, surely this would've failed?
I decided to ring round some local flagmakers, in the hope that one may have dealt with this company in the past, & have an alternative method of contact for them. I spoke to Charlie at Barmy Flags, at about 4pm today, & after trying to contact the other company on my behalf, he called me back & said he would have a go at putting something together for us, to be picked up tonight. The man was an absolute lifesaver.
I got home from work, & the fog was ridiculous. You couldn't see your hand in front of your face,
& myself & my wife had to set off for the Peak District in it. The obvious traffic & a few closed roads aside, it was much more straightforward than I anticipated.
Although the flag is even more basic than we wanted, & doesn't quite convey the message we wanted it to (we had to limit it to 10 characters or less), I'm delighted that we have the flag, & for probably the first time since we started this, I feel relaxed. I've put in all the work I can to be prepared for this, & everything else is in the lap of the Gods. Surely we've had as much bad luck as is possible now?
I intend to add a few more bits to it manually, just Oscar's web addresses (http://oscarknox.blogspot.co.uk/) (https://twitter.com/Wee_Oscar) & the neuroblastoma alliance details, mainly so people will hopefully look further into it.
You can have a look at the flag in it's current incarnation so you can have a rough idea what to look for on Match of the Day tomorrow night (these photo's are taken outside the MOTD studios tonight), but hopefully it will be a bit more detailed by then. Deano has arranged t-shirts for us to wear to games with it, which will certainly be noticeable (!) once the main tour starts on Sunday.
As always, those of you who haven't already,please use the above links to familiarise yourself with Oscar's story. Also, anyone who would like to donate to our JustGiving page, you can do so here http://www.justgiving.com/7ma7ches7coun7ries7days
We are funding this trip entirely by ourselves, & 100 per cent of all donations page will go to Oscar's charity
Thanks for reading
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