The Fan II

Any regular readers of the blog will know that I’m a man of limited passions. The family, football, Star Wars being the ones oft cited.

Before all those arose there was Star Trek. I didn’t realise it was in colour until the early 80s when I saw it in the common room at university. Before then we only had a black and white TV at home.

In the mid 80s when the BBC said it was going to re run the series, I went out and bought a video recorder so I wouldn’t miss it.

Often I’d come back from my job as a local reporter at the Wimbledon News to watch episodes of yore.

I remember a childhood friend Derek who loved it as much as me. We always liked the fact that it seemed as if you’d never seen the episode before, inevitably you had.

A few weeks ago I had a dream that there was an episode I’d never seen before. I didn’t know if I was suffering from anxiety or something much worse.

I have got the original episodes on DVD now. They arrived in London and as I sit and watch one of the episodes from Season 2, I think surely it would have been cheaper to get the mangled video recorder repaired.

The boy stuck something in it a few months back. And I have not been able to relieve the stress of life by watching old familiars.

My logic is that if I get a new video recorder too soon, the boy will simply mash that one up as well.

So I have decided to lose to gain. There are scores of other programmes that lie unwatched in the video library. I have to wait. But in the interim, having the Star Treks accessible again has made me beam.