Crisis at Banner HQ

Hey fellas, nice to see you again.

So the general consensus on Facebook was that the banner should be LONG, as originally planned, which I was pleased about, because I agreed. So I've sewn it all together now and it is bundled in a corner of my living room awaiting its debut.

HOWEVER

there is a bit of a spanner in the works here, in that I don't know how to construct a poley-carrying-structure for it, in fact I apparently don't even know what that is called :( I am going to appeal for help in a minute, but first I will describe my cack-handed attempts so far.

I'm illustrating this on MS Paint because I haven't taken any photos of anything and I love MS Paint.

Okay so first of all I went to B&Q with no idea what I was going to get. I thought I'd just mosey around and see what looked useful. So mosey I did, and eventually I decided on a structure somewhat like this.

After an appropriate amount of moseying, I decided to get some wooden dowel and some T-joints and elbow-joints that plumbers use, they're copper. You've seen them. I actually got 15mm square cut pinewood, instead of circular dowel, because it was cheaper and I doubted it would make any difference. My plan was to wedge the ends of the wood in the joints like this.

Bob's yer uncle. When I got home, I realised that the wood didn't fit in the ends of the joints, so I shaved a bit off one end with a Stanley knife (by now you are seeing what my DIY efforts are generally like).

The wood now jammed quite solidly in the joint, but I was suddenly struck that we would be carrying this around a lot, it might be jostled and stuff, and basically this was not very secure and quite rubbish. Also, a piece of wood 15mm wide and 2.3m long is quite bendy and I think they will snap if it's a bit windy or anything, really.

REJECT

Okay so THEN I sat around and tried to think outside the box and I thought, tent poles are long and strong and flexible and can be dismantled and mantled (?) with ease (oh yeah. it needs to be dismantlable because I have to get it on the tram and I doubt the other passengers would take kindly to a 7m stick taking up the whole carriage).

Off I went to Go Outdoors (other camping shops are available), and lo and behold, a tent pole repair kit with 11 sections which add up to exactly 7m. Excellent. I bought one.

Now I still don't know how to attach the vertical bits to the horizontal bit. I thought I could still use some of the wood I bought earlier for the upright carrying poles, but ARGH

So I traipsed off to Wilkinsons (other shops which sell everything in the world are available). I wandered round the DIY section for a bit and eventually came away with these.

And this was how I envisaged it all working:

the superglue is for emergencies.

Anyway, that hasn't worked either, because the hose clamps won't tighten to the width of the tent pole and the plastic clippy things are too wide for the wood. so fuck it.

CAN ANYONE HELP ME??? I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT I'M DOING. WE HAVE TWO WEEKS. IF YOU HELP, I WILL COOK FOR YOU.

sorry for shouting but I'm fed up now. Please pass it around: I need someone to help me with the banner poles. thank you guys, I love you xxxx