Lateral Thinking Keeps Panic At Bay
Just two evenings before we had to travel to the battle in London, we called in reinforcements in the form of Jeremy, a friend whom we knew had room in his mind for the surreal (like most teenagers really). We spent a long time browsing through ClipArt and other illustrations seeking ideas for the 'look' of the robot, and trying to think laterally !

Most important was that it should be tele-visual, if you see what I mean. We were aiming to look good on TV, so we wanted something bright and contrasting. We did not want to make another dull grey angular metallic 'thing'.

If you've read about how Charlie invented the name Slippery Strana then you'll understand the yellow (banana) and the red (strawberry) colours. But besides the not-to-be-mentioned significance of those two fruits, what else could we use to represent 'Slippery' ?

What ? An octopus ?

Desperation was upon us - we had to decide - so YES ! An octopus was slippery enough, and octopuses have been implicated in some awful nasty naval stories too, so octopuses were sort of aggressive, weren't they ?

We've Got A Logo At Last
I offered to draw the octopus outline on a cardboard template, and then I had to make my journey home. Charlie and Jeremy continued into the early hours, cutting the template and spraying what we hoped would be an angry looking octopus ! Well, we could always touch it up later with angry eyebrows and a fierce beak . . .

But somehow we never quite got the time to make Slippery Strana look angry. Surprised yes, but angry - not quite. The emphasis remained on 'Slippery'. But it was very bright, and we sort of liked that.

What A Team
Earlier in the evening, our third stout team member Alex (aged 7 at the time), helped paint the sharp-edge-protecting ping pong balls and the black spikes that were Slippery Strana's only weapons. He did very well considering his arm was in a sling!

Special thanks to our temporary recruit Jeremy, for helping out while Alex was unavoidably tucked up in bed.

I derived the excellent background Octopus for this page from a picture at the Mote Marine Laboratory.
(Look for the page "About Octopi ..." on their "Information Services" page.)

Page updated on 2007-04-15