Live long and prosper

After months of talking about a Girls' Weekend in Dubai, we finally got our act together and headed off to the Smog on Friday morning, having booked into the Ibis Deira City Centre hotel. Our plans were to visit the malls and find a nightclub for a spot of boogying. We began with a sustaining lunch (it kept me going right up until 9.15 pm) at the Lime Tree Cafe in Jumeirah. This cafe is run by New Zealanders and features 'flat white coffee' on the menu, which delighted Betty. Apparently it's just coffee with steamed milk, which I would call 'posh' coffee. We then went to the Mall of the Emirates, which may be the biggest mall in the world (or it could be Dubai Mall which I visited the next day - it's a bit confusing). It felt like I'd gone into a black hole with so many shops of all kinds from designer brands to Middle East trinkets. I became totally disorientated at one point, when I had confidently ridden an upward escalator to find I'd reached a dead end rather than the bench where I was supposed to meet the others. After passing Monsoon four times, I finally crashed out of the tractor beam and went into warp drive with much relief. I wasn't impressed with Mall of the Emirates. It has beautiful, airy glass roofs - nice to look at but impractical when we have temperatures hitting 50 C at the moment. The air conditioning wasn't coping and, being menopausal to boot, I felt uncomfortable with the constant glaze of sweat.

We checked into the Ibis, which is very cheap for Dubai, but has all my key elements. Clean, good supportive bed and excellent staff. Betty was keen to see the new Star Trek movie so I agreed to tag along and we took a taxi to Dubai Festival City (Mall No 2 for the weekend). I hadn't planned to watch the movie at all. When I saw the trailer I wasn't impressed. Why go to see an imitation? I grew up with the original series and to me Jim is Jim. He's not even T J Hooker. Or William Shatner. He is Captain James T Kirk. This young whippersnapper is just a poor imitation and I want no part of it. All these feelings disappeared about five minutes into the film. I LOVED it. They managed to capture all the elements that we came to love when the TV show was first aired and Star Trek became compulsive viewing. As I watched the film, I came to realise how the characters and their adventures had become part of me. More than just a favourite show. In fact, for many years I've found the whole Star Trek thing a bit sad and naff. Yet as I watched the film I remembered sitting in our house in Sprowston, glued to the set, enjoying the repartee between Bones and Mr Spock, waiting for Scottie to beam someone up and wondering if that thing in Uhura's ear itched at all. Phasers and communicators were all so far from what we experienced back in the sixties. We could never believe that one day we would be using our own mobile phones in much the same way. Except for beaming up of course, much as it would be useful sometimes. Other old characters were included in the film - Sulu and Chekov. As I watched, it occurred to me that Gene Rodenberry was truly a remarkable man. Not only did he have the first female black person in a key role on TV, but he had Russian and Japanese characters at a time when both countries were unpopular in the US. All of this went completely over my head at the time - to me they really were flying a spaceship hundreds of years in the future when the human race had learned to be peaceful and wise. We can but dream.

I was inspired to find out when the first episode was shown on British TV. It turns out that we all sat down to watch Star Trek on Saturday, 12 July, 1969. That was the year that the series ended in the US. However, the BBC timed it well. One week we watch Jim & Co boldly going somewhere and just 10 days later we witness the first moon landing. I was 12 years old and had started at Thorpe Grammar School. In those days kids used to roam freely and Sprowston didn't have so many houses, so we had our own version of the NCC Enterprise just down the road - a huge fallen tree trunk. I remember watching the show on sunny evenings just before bed. I've just done some internet research and I'm amazed that it was 1969 when BBC 1 first broadcast programmes in colour (just as well or we'd never have seen the green lady or those tight tan coloured uniforms). It was an amazing year, although I didn't know it at the time. But all of the events of 1969 - the last public appearance of the Beatles, the first episodes of Monty Python's Flying Circus - are woven into the fabric of my character whether I like it or not. It's what makes me who I am. Which is why I had a little cry at the end of the film when Jim, Mr Spock, Dr McCoy and the rest of them were all safe and well and about to start all the adventures that we saw back when we were young. A little cry for the twelve year old girl with her whole life ahead of her. Live long and prosper.