This instalment of the Dalek Game is for Beatrix Potter’s beautiful A Tale of Two Bad Mice. I have mentioned before (“Scary“) how I like stories which play with the unsettling proportions of dolls houses. A Tale of Two Bad Mice does this, but with such loving detail that it isn’t scary so much as it is a solid, real little world – I used to get as frustrated as the mice did when item after item turned out not to be real: the coffee which was beads and the plaster ham stuck to its dish. Poor Hunca Munca and Tom Thumb.
The MS Society in Queensland has a holiday house for people with MS and their families on the edge of the broadwater at Runaway Bay. It is a beautiful location – it has its own jetty and pelicans sit on the pylons, schools of butterfly-bright sailing boats go out in classes and overturn and run into each other – but was used as a set for (I think) the second Flipper movie. As a result, in addition to the disorienting effect of halls built for wheelchairs and hospital beds, a number of the cupboards in the kitchen weren’t really cupboards at all – just doors nailed to boxes on the walls left over from the filming. I think they installed real cupboards a year or two ago, but I used to sympathise with the Bad Mice.
SO, if you would like to own this Dalek drawing (it is drawn in sepia ink on an A6 piece of paper: 5.8×4.1 inches), the original is available in exchange for a suitably generous donation to the MS Society. How it works:
Please email me a bid on or before next Wednesday 25 January with the amount of your bid (in Australian dollars): tanaudel at gmail dot comDepending on internet access, I may update this from time to time with the highest bid, but no guarantees. Edit: At 21 January, the highest bid is $100.If you make the highest bid over my reserve (which is “suitably generous”), I will let you know by email.The winner will then have to send me evidence of a donation to the MS Society of Qld.I will send out the art (and pay postage).Maybe we find out more about MS.Artist’s decision is final etc.
1 Feb 2012: The Daleks have gone to a good home and $100 to the MS Society – thank you!

January 18, 2012 at 8:53 pm
If only I wasn’t moving in two weeks and watching my budget. However, I will link a post to this on FB – if I can’t help one way I will help in another. I love Miss Potter, BTW. She was a fine amateur scientist … and only prevented from being a professional by her era.
January 22, 2012 at 9:36 pm
Thank you! And I’d love to see more about that side of her life.
January 25, 2012 at 9:07 pm
I have a very good Potter biography … somewhere in my mountain of book boxes. *sigh* The biography mentioned how dreadfully difficult it was to be an intelligent female in the Victorian era. The b*sterds wouldn’t give her a student pass for Kew Gardens, even though she was a major contributor of British specimens of mushrooms of other fungi. She was barely tolerated for her scientific illustrations of said fungi.
January 18, 2012 at 11:41 pm
This is absolutely stunning! The chair on his head, unreal! Wonderful, simply wonderful!!
January 22, 2012 at 9:37 pm
Thank you :)
January 19, 2012 at 11:15 am
A wonderfully creative piece of art for a very worthy cause. I’ll tweet it out to the world. :))
January 22, 2012 at 9:37 pm
Thank you very much!