Eunie and I were married in 1964. Our son, Hans, was born in 1969. During those heady years we were free spirits. The first Star Trek  episode was aired in 1966. We saw it, and every one until 1969 when the original TV series ended. To us it was entertainment as we had never imagined. It was mesmerising.

We watched it on an ancient Zenith TV that my parent bought in 1949. It looked very similar to this one:

It just wouldn’t die, which was a good thing because we could hardly afford to eat, let alone buy a new TV. Every time it would quit, I would pull all of the tubes (or valves, if you please) out of it, take them to the corner drug store where they had a machine to test them, purchase new ones to replace the ones that were “weak”, and then plug them all back in.

There are about a zillion people out there as we speak who are pounding out masterpieces of the criticists art concerning the recent Star Trek  how-did-it-all-get-started film. That’s not my purpose here.

What I do want to record here is the reaction of two seniors who, as young adults, grew up together with the original TV series. For us the latest Star Trek  was magic. It was a time machine. It took us back to our rash, impetuous youth and brought tears to our eyes. It was nostalgia perfected. Every scene delivered yet another “remember that?” moment.

I normally resist the urge to expose my camera to all of the little Big Brothers puffed up with insect authority who are watching me as I watch, but today I was unable to resist capturing the moment:

Yes, that is a surreptitiously acquired image of the movie screen displaying the iconic Enterprise.

We pretty much lost interest in Star Trek  after the original series ended in 1969. The animated series of ’73 – ’74 was a cruel joke and the follow-on Trekish TV series sporting various aliases, though mostly well done, had lost the magic of the original series. I recognise that that is a highly personal view and others would disagree with varying degrees of ardour.

Well, enough serious stuff. I now wish to report to you a rare sighting of Elvis. It happened at Jackson Square in Hamilton this very day. We witnessed it with our own eyes:

Yes, it is sadly true. Elvis is reduced to selling chips. Is nothing sacred?