Oliver "Ollie" Mardon
Human
Hard and soft. On and off. Good in the bones.
Two settings. On. Off.
Off is completely horizontal. Barely able to confirm he wants burgers for dinner. Total rest. The kind that only makes sense if you've seen what On looks like.
On is something else. Hyper chatty, bouncing round the house, shadowboxing my shoulder while I'm trying to have a conversation. A ball of energy that fills every corner of a room.
But get him in a ring and it changes. The chatter stops. The focus arrives. He trains like it matters, because to him it does. You watch him and you can see exactly who he's becoming. Not aggression. Controlled power. He knows the difference without being told.
Outside the ring he's the most chivalrous 15-year-old I know. Loves younger kids. Properly loves them. Came top of his maths class and said nothing. His teacher emailed me stunned. He still hasn't brought it up. When someone was picking on a mate during a game he didn't hesitate. No thug. Quite the opposite. But dangerous in the way that really principled people are. The kind you feel before they show it.
The hard and the soft. The on and the off. Underpinned by a value set the world would be better for learning from.
Wants to be a chippy. I fully support it.
He stepped into a boxing ring at 15. So did I. Different code. Same instinct. We've never needed to say it out loud.
You always have to say everything twice. Even when he's just asked you a question. For f sake.
The man he's becoming is someone I'd want in my corner. He already is.
If he reads this: proud of you mate. Not for the grades or the boxing or the job. For the way you move through the world. That's the hard one. You've got it.