The Kingdom of Heaven is like….
The Dalek outside our venue inspired a comment about the Kingdom of heaven being like a TARDIS – bigger on the inside than on the outside, and trancending time and space.
I feel so chuffed! My Dalek just got a part in another service – I’m slowly taking over Greenbelt…mwahahahhahahahaha.
Actually, it’s an intersting thought, that I just had to write down – hence the slightly strange blog 2 mins after my last one!
As I’m now sat in NewForms One, venue managing, and using the wifi hotspot that is in a very convinent place in the venue, I figured I’d best start blogging about greenbelt, and stop going on and on and about my Dalek. Although the Dalek does feature in Greenbelt…
The whole weekend was marred a bit by the fact that my grandad – my biological father’s dad – died a few days before the festival started. The funeral is on Tuesday morning, which means I have to get to liverpool straight from Greenbelt, and have had to buy funeral clothes from chelternham as my greenbelt clothes are hardly appropriate. Especially as the five grandchildren are travelling in the car.
Truth is, I’m dreading the funeral. I don’t want to go, I don’t want to go! And I feel like having a three-year-old temper tantrum and saying how it’s not fair…but so far I’ve refrained from either shouting at someone, or bursting into tears. Apart from snapping at graham every time he did something even vauglly annoying.
Aside from the whole funeral thing, it’s the fact that I’m going to have to be someone I’m not. I’m not one of the five grandchildren, I’m not a member of that family – I’m not really fully a member of any family, but my birth family confuse me and in a way they scare me. I don’t know them, I can’t be me for them, I dont know how they’d react to anything I say, they don’t know the evil glint in my eye that I my friends know if I’m plotting something, they just in general don’t know ME!
This greenbelt has been odd – I’ve been so much more confident than I was last year – in the words of one of the people setting up the venue, last year I wouldn’t say boo to a goose, this year I’m bossy. I did offer to go all quiet and shy again, but my offer was denied. I think I enjoy me more confident…it’s kinda nice to be able to stick up for myself, and also to not be intimidated by ‘big scary people’. Even though I do still feel a bit unhappy about the church of fools, I realised that I do owe it a lot – especailly confidence wise. It’s made quite a difference.
But now I’m supposed to be thinking about the kingdom of heaven…so I’m best to go. I may update later, as having internet access during a church service is great fun!
Oh, and the Dalek is at the moment guarding the venue. It’s been getting quite a good press.
And one last thing – I saw my name in print for the first time today :S
Dalek is now constructed and is packed away in a van.
We took it to church on sunday evening, 4 of us wheeling this very loud dalek through the center of york, with loads of tourists looking at us, and people starting to grin manically as they turned a corner and saw a dalek trundling towards them! It made it worth spending all the time we spent working on it worthwhile!
We’re off to greenbelt tommorrow morning – should be there at about 2pm and then the Dalek gets its first real outing!
Dalek is now constructed and is packed away in a van.
We took it to church on sunday evening, 4 of us wheeling this very loud dalek through the center of york, with loads of tourists looking at us, and people starting to grin manically as they turned a corner and saw a dalek trundling towards them! It made it worth spending all the time we spent working on it worthwhile!
We’re off to greenbelt tommorrow morning – should be there at about 2pm and then the Dalek gets its first real outing!
I never explained why did I?
Whilst we were making a giant (8m) Make Poverty History Banner we started to watch the new series of Doctor Who – mainly because cutting out massive cardboard templates isn’t the most thrilling thing to do, but partly because Doctor Who is one of my current obsessions.
At one point, I wanted to make an image of a Dalek wearing a white band with the words “Ex-ter-min-ate Pov-er-ty” next to it for a leaflet, but this never happened.
During the July the second march I saw a Dalek and asked “Can we make one?” not expecting to be taken seriously – but my friends readily agreed, and we started planning to make a Dalek as a campaign tool.
The reasons I think a Dalek would make a great tool are mainly due to the media attention I think it will get. Whilst Doctor Who was off the air, it was the Daleks that got a lot of media attention – they are a recognisable symbol, everyone knows how they speak – and best of all, one wouldn’t expect to see one on a demonstration.
I have a theory as to how we can have a good Dalek, but as it’s geeky in the extreme, I won’t post it just yet…
The base is made, spray painted silver and has blue balls glued to it. It is also mounted on casters and can move, and a person can fit inside it. If you can’t see the photo then it’s me inside the dalek the url is http://images.kodakgallery.com/photos1327/2/51/32/18/96/0/96183251209_0_ALB.jpg .
We’ve also made the frame of the shoulders and are attaching slats to the wire that surrounds the frame, and are also working on the pannel that the exterminater and plunger is on. We also know what we are doing for the neck, and the head is made from papier mache and is sitting on my bedroom floor.
The dalek is now in my living room – taking up a corner and dominating the room. And the plumer is coming round tommorrow…
Base made, and is spray painted silver.
we’re working on the shoulders next
In the last 2 two days work has progressed significantly. We now have half a dalek base ready, and it is actually beginning to look like a Dalek. This is largely due to the amazing invention that is called an elctric jig saw, which is now living at my house, so I can cut out dalek pannels instead of working on essays.
Photo’s will be comeing at some point soon, but it will have to be once I get my camera sorted out, or someone comes round with another one.
Meals ate : Sweet curry with pineapple, bananna, lentils and potato with rice and a mango lassie. Oh, and chocolate bread and butter pudding. And a roast veg on puff pastry thing with cheese on top, which was rather nice, and my attempt at caramalising banannas, which althought it didn’t work made something that Graham ate anyway. it had chocolate on it 
My bedroom is now slightly tidier, well, it would be if it didn’t have a Dalek sat in the center of it anyway…
shopping : none
time spent : 1pm – 11pm
Meals ate : graham had a ready meal, then we got pizzas because I could be bothered to cook
TV watched : Stargate:Atlantis episode 3, Stargate the film, Red Dwarf – Polymorph.
Dalek Progress : After I realised that we couldn’t get the Dalek through any of the doors in my house, we have worked out a way of a) putting a person inside it, or using it as storage for demos and b) getting it in and out of my house, and c) getting it to Greenbelt. We’ve also got the base cut out, and all four struts cut out. Today’s challenge will be the top of the base and another two struts so that we can chop it in half and transport it easier.
Miscallaneous notes : Kitchen is slightly better, bedroom is a tip. I have a third of a bottle of archers and a bit of pina colada in my fridge. I think that the two are some what connected.
I’ve just spent 2 hours sorting out the base of a dalek – the whole 11 sides are now cut out of MDF and all are planed to the correct size and I’ve begun sanding them down. Progress is good!
You can tell the person who was meant to come round at 11am to help didn’t show up.
The Dalek will be full size, and will be making it’s first appearance at Greenbelt, so anyone at greenbelt will meet it, unfortunatly, that means that we have about 3 weeks in which to complete a full size moving Dalek. Which should be fun.
Photos will be forth coming, as soon as I get someone to host them, up until then, if you *really* want to see, email sophie.dutton(at)yorksj.ac.uk and I’ll email you them.