INVASION OF THE DAI-LEK!
Inventor Steve reveals surprise in storage
TWO years ago retired civil servant Steve Taylor was faced with an ultimatum. He had to choose between his wife and the replica Dalek which had sat in his living room for 15 years.
He chose the former – albeit with a compromise that meant he didn’t entirely have to lose the latter.
Rather than say goodbye to his Doctor Who villain Steve and wife Diane found a compromise – at a cost of £700 per year.
Now the model, affectionately known as Dai-Lek, spends his days in a wooden crate at a selfstorage unit in Aberdare along with two lamps, a table, and an electric bike.
“I took early retirement and it was one of my bucket list things,” Steve, a former patent worker turned “frustrated engineer”, explained at Storage Cymru.
“I was on my PC looking at electric wheelchairs. [Diane] asked what I was buying an electric wheelchair for and I said I was building a Dalek – and that was it.”
Dai’s base, the 63-yearold lovingly explains, is made from an electric wheelchair, while plywood and fibreglass brings the model up to its full height. Vauxhall indicators control the lighting while the 57 orbs lining it are made from wrapping oversize baubles that used to contain small Christmas presents.
The result is a monster that moves, talks and lights up, and has spent hours at a time terrorising the customers of its nearest Asda to raise money for Children in Need.
For 61-year-old Diane memories of Dai-lek are mixed. On one occasion an ambulance was rushed to their Abernant house. Upon entering the living room and seeing Dai one paramedic dropped to his knees – instantly transported back to watching the looming monstrosity take over the TV set as a child.
She jokes: “He had been there for about 15 years and I said to Steve: ‘I can’t stick it any more, he’s doing my head in’.”
The contents of Robin Jenkins’ two storage units, he warns, are too confidential for us to even look at, let alone discuss. A microbiologist now working in the medical field, he has rented space at the site since 2012 to house filing cabinets full of the results of clinical trials and the results of important operations.
But he is also a man with a few hobbies. As a classic car enthusiast and award-winning maker of model aircraft and vehicles, his storage container also contains the roof of his current Mazda sports car and a model of a Russian Armoured Fighting Vehicle used during the invasion of Afghanistan.
For him the reason for renting the space is purely practical rather than sentimental, as a man who splits his time between his mother’s home in Aberdare and his home in Kent.
Robin, 58, said: “I’ve still got my house in Kent but I’ve been back here since 2012 and I needed somewhere I can keep my work stuff really. I’ve been here longer than I thought I would. It’s dry, it’s safe.”
Out of the 250 active customers that use Cymru Storage, Steve and Robin are two of the more unusual ones – except, its manager suggests, from someone who once stored a golden throne there before it could be taken to its permanent home.
In a site which covers 30,000sq ft there are around 100 caravans securely stored outside the imposing red and white building along with a handful of burger and catering vans and the hull of a glistening blue boat.
Cymru Storage was, according to manager Phil Thomas, the first of its kind in the South Wales corridor north of the M4.
Originally used exclusively to store medical records, insurance forms and other data, it decided to branch into general storage after requests started to flow in around 2005.
Today it has 150 selfcontained units both in the form of wooden crates and rooms of varying sizes down a long, winding corridor.
“We have 10 customers that have been here since 2008 and have about 30 customers that have been there five years or more,” manager Phil, who is one of just two employees at Cymru Storage, explains.
“Lots of people will declutter to sell their houses. We had one person who was in Afghanistan for about seven years who had storage here longterm.”
Odette Ward is perhaps a typical example of a person in need of some space.
The family ambassador at Cwm Taf University Health Board is currently renovating her new twobedroom house in Aberdare after downsizing from a roomy five-bedroom property after her husband’s death.
For now, her unit in Cymru Storage houses heirlooms, including a wooden crate her grandfather used to move from the West Indies to Wales, and box after box of china belonging to her greatgreat-grandmother. She modestly tells me she has nothing of real interest in her unit but prizes a table her late husband had made from a ship from the Spanish Armada.
“They have been so lovely here,” the 51-yearold, from Aberdare, said.
“The day we moved we rented a big unit and thought we could get everything in but we couldn’t. So at the last minute they found me this container.”
At the moment, Odette is trying to declutter her unit. Her aim for the day is to find a homeless hostel or women’s refuge facilities she can give her unused sofas to.
“To be honest I forgot I had this unit at all,” she admits. “It just goes to show how much you don’t need. We are such a throwaway culture.”