Do They Still Have Sandwiches There?

When it came time to book the upper abdomen ultrasound scan at the local hospital’s Diagnostic Imaging Department I was hoping they could fit me in yesterday afternoon because, since I had to be in town later in the day for a birthday drinks bash, it would kill two birds with one stone. Obviously this kind of misguided optimism illustrates how little I know about the workings of the NHS because although I did get a Friday afternoon appointment, it isn’t until well past the middle of next month.

Talking with Mister Mark, who was also going to the evening do, we figured it would be an idea to use the time I had planned to set aside wisely and go see Star Trek. Given that it was a summer movie with plenty of whiz and bang it had to be seen on a big screen with a sound system that would make your ears bleed. Since it had only been on release a couple of weeks we figured that shouldn’t be a problem. Unfortunately what neither of us had taken into account was Night at the Museum 2, whose unwanted arrival uprooted Star Trek and relegated it to the multiplex broom cupboards.

I suppose there is a place in the world for charmless and unfunny Ben Stiller comedies. Landfills, for instance. Its appearance was like deciding to go to a restaurant only to find that steak was off the menu and replaced by a steaming turdburger on a stale bun. There was still the BFI IMAX, but it turned out their afternoon performance was already fully booked. Both the Wimbledon and Greenwich IMAX screens were showing Star Trek and both had seats available, but checking the actual sizes of the screens, it didn’t seem worth it. Just as we were giving up, Mister Mark discovered the Vue at the O2. Apart from the biggest screen in London to watch the film on, it offered free parking too.

It may not be the greatest film ever made, but Star Trek was well above the average summer blockbuster. A couple of weekends back, probably when the film was opening here, Channel 4 screened the previous movie Star Trek: Nemesis, which handily showed just how stale the long-running franchise had become. Obviously in need of a reboot if they were going to squeeze any money out of it, at least Paramount had the good idea to hand it over to someone who wasn’t an avid fan, thereby saving us from being served up a big helping of shit stew.


Like Ron Moore’s expert take on Battlestar Galactica, JJ Abrams and his boys examined what they had been presented with then saved the best and junked the rest. Luckily one element that got flushed was Gene Roddenberry’s useless wish fulfilment utopian edict that in the future everyone in the Federation got on like happy families, thereby allowing some proper conflict between the characters to enter the equation. Concentrating on establishing the characters, and thereby making them the heart of the story, meant that it didn’t run out of plot and spunk its budget on overblown spectacle to make up for the deficit, which is usually de rigueur for summer movies.

Star Trek may not have been perfect but, like last year’s Iron Man, it proved to be an entertaining couple of hours rather than a mindless special effects frenzy. If the story may have close to tying itself in knots, the unspoken acknowledgment that the elder Spock was ultimately responsible for the death of Kirk’s father was an interesting move. Amongst the nicely balanced jokes, it’s a shame the captain of the Enterprise didn’t have a co-pilot with him when he took the shuttle to the Romulan ship. That way, with two federation officers under interrogation, directly after Nero’s questioning the subordinate could have shouted, “Don’t tell him Pike!”

After that it was off to the birthday bash, which we got to even after London’s tourists deciding to stray off the pavements and wander in the roads. The past week or so, after the GP’s appointment it has been fun and games trying to determine what I could eat without it leading to rather catastrophic results. All dairy products and red meat were out. Even the few times I’d tried something as simple as a piece of baked fish and boiled vegetables things hadn’t turned out too well, so to save further discomfort I’d resorted to a daily diet of lightly salted rice cakes and water. Dull, I know, but safe.

With all that ongoing, when we got to the pub and having not seen some of these bods for a while, people like Rox, our wonderful Persian Princess, were telling me how well I looked. Even an actress friend that I’d meant to hook up with during the past few weeks but had been sick herself thought I appeared much healthier than usual, and that was even before she’d been to the bar. Maybe an unknown ailment is the path to good health after all.