Many of you who are my friends or fans on Facebook will know that I spent yesterday at the international Star Trek convention. If you’re not a geek, please don’t switch off!! It’s not all Klingons and alien kisses. The highlight of my day was a conversation with Sir Patrick Stewart, one of the most distinguished and accomplished actors England has produced, and the captain I most want to be married to.
As a university chancellor, he takes a keen interest in education and even mentioned mature students graduating during his hour-long Q&A session. So when I had him alone he seemed very interested in my linguistics. I didn’t tell him that I don’t actually know yet whether I’ve passed, or how I use it in plain English training, the conversation didn’t get that far – his smile was enough to shut me up. When I say ‘alone,’ we weren’t actually alone – there were a dozen or so people hovering nearby (in case you were wondering why I had my chance to elope and spoke instead of education…). Interestingly, he’s only recently started tweeting – I definitely think he would benefit from a one-to-one social media session with me the next time he has a free evening in London.
I would like to say for the record that Captain Kirk was charming and charismatic too. I didn’t meet him personally, but sat about ten feet away from him during his talk and he was extremely entertaining.
My mum will be pleased to read that – as will one or two of you, mentioning no names (but one is Deedub). And I know he was very handsome in 1966, but the bald French captain gets my vote every time. Anyway, I wouldn’t marry him now, of course, even if he’d popped the question yesterday. I don’t want to be married to an actor, just a starship captain. Plus, as I’m reminded every day, I am already married… to someone with his head in the stars, so I guess that’s close enough.
The week wasn’t all stars and daydreams. Helping one of my clients with an SEO technique for creating backlinks, I stumbled upon an article that brought back a memory so vivid it could have happened yesterday. My client sells baby gifts, so we were searching for on-line articles relating to babies, when up popped a photo of Rick Springfield! If you don’t remember him from the 80s, he was a pretty hot rock star. I suddenly had the strongest memory of Marion and me following him around Hamleys like two hungry puppies on heat. Asking for autographs was frowned upon, but we had a little trick to overcome that. In those days, credit card machines involved squashing an imprint of the card onto a carbonated slip – one copy for the customer, one for the store. Well I can tell you now that the store copy of Rick Springfield’s credit card payment is safely tucked away in Marion’s loft, along with Michael Jackson’s and Phil Oakey’s. Famous people got some bargains with us back then…!
I won’t be quoting Rick Springfield lyrics today. Sometimes, one captain’s as good as another, and I think this is quite appropriate while we’re talking about handsome young captains. “Young and beautiful, someday your looks will be gone; when the others turn you off, who’ll be turning you on…?”
On, in, up over, under… or you can follow right here: @WeekendWitch.
Leave a Reply