Photo of the day: The view through my window

A week ago we moved (temporarily until we find something better) to a tiny flat in the middle of Cambridge. It's a great location for the money and is only 10 minutes walk into the town centre or to the station. This is the view through the skylight. It's great to lie in bed and look straight up at the clouds. The only problem with this place is that we're right next door to the local curry-house and their roof extractor points right at our skylight. They're in there making curry day and night, seven days a week. I love the smell of Indian food myself, but the problem is that it makes me drool continuously whenever the window gets opened.

Photo of the day: The Andaman Sea

I'm cheating again - this photo wasn't taken today. I took it 2 weeks ago as I stood in the warm crystal-clear Andaman Sea in Phuket, Thailand. I was over there for a few weeks, managing to miss almost all of the British winter in fact. It's quite a shock to be back in England with the constant clouds, drizzle and cold. It's sometimes hard to believe that I had fish swimming around my ankles a fortnight ago. It seems like a dream now.

Photo of the day: The view through my window

I didn't actually take this photo today. It was taken last week (16th Feb) in Cambridge (the same house with the kitchen photo). Admittedly it's not the most exciting photo, but I guess it captures a dismal February morning.

Photo of the day: A kitchen!

I came across someone's photoblog recently whilst surfing. Such a good idea I thought - you can still be creative without having to spend hours writing a load of bollocks that nobody will read anyway. Therefore, because I simply am too lazy to write anything right now, here is my very first "DrGaz photo of the day".

What is it? Well, I'm currently staying for a few days at a friend's house in Cambridge. This is a wacky perpective on the kitchen I snapped earlier. I quite like how the blue fading natural light outside contrasts with the artificially lit interior.

Sevans Dalek models

"Sevans Models" was a British firm that manufactured 1:5 scale Dalek models in the 1980s. These were the first authentic ones ever produced (they actually did look like Daleks), and were popular with Doctor Who fans despite criticism of requiring a degree in mechanical engineering to build one.

The Dalek kit retailed for around £16 (with inflation that'll be the equivalent of around 30 quid now). I owned two (pictured). Santa kindly brought me the first one for Christmas 1986. My father helped to build it and I painted in the grey/black livery of the Doctor Who story Resurrection of the Daleks. The second Dalek, (the silver/gold one) was received the following Christmas. This time I built it all on my own and it came out fine, despite my father's lack of intervention.

Sevans Models was set up by a bloke called Stuart Evans, hence the name "Sevans" (get it?). As the story goes, he gave up a boring job driving a desk for the civil service to set up the company after obtaining a licence from the BBC to manufacture the Dalek model. The company was successful with the Dalek, and it wasn't long before they were banging out Cybermen, Davroses, Movie Daleks, K9s and Ice Warriors.

My gold Dalek had a very short life. It was repainted, modified, and generally buggered around with many, many times until it looked so awful that I binned it.

Goldie's predecessor had a happier story. It survived almost until it's 20th birthday before getting unceremoniously flogged on Ebay (for a ridiculously small amount of money, I might add) at the end of 2006. I have to say that age had taken its toll on the little fella and he was looking a bit knackered by the time he was packed off.

My Sevans Daleks were truly excellent models and I had a lot of fun building, painting and buggering about with them years ago. Full credit to Stuart Evans. I wonder what he's doing now.

Did you (or do you) own a Sevans Dalek? Do you want to own up to DrGaz about it? If you do then please leave a message here. Don't forget to include a link to a photo if you can.