Breakfast club with space heroes

Barbara Bain, right, as Dr Helena Russell in Space:1999. Ms Bain was
a celebrity guest at Autographica, in March 2014

As strange moments in life go it's one that is vivid and does not fade. And that is not by lucky coincidence. 

For there are day-to-day memories, and then there are vivid snapshots - moments in time etched forever in your mind, ready to be replayed whenever you choose.

An example of this "vivid snapshot" technique was the morning I enjoyed breakfast in the company of some of my childhood heroes from the world of science fiction.

Walking into the breakfast room at the conference hotel I saw Kenny Baker, the actor who played R2-D2 in the Star Wars movie. He was seated at a table with actress Valerie Gale, who accompanied him.

He waved and called out "Bermuda" as Heather and I chose a table and sat down. We'd spoken to him the previous day at the reception gathering at the beginning of the March 2014 Autographica event, and that is how he had found out that I'd travelled from Bermuda.

A few moments after I'd entered the breakfast room, Space:1999 actress Barbara Bain also walked in. Like Mr Baker and Ms Gale, she was a celebrity guest for the weekend. She'd attended the reception drinks event held in the atrium at the top level of the Radisson Heathrow hotel on the outskirts of London. Others there included moonwalking Apollo astronauts Buzz Aldrin and Alan Bean.

Star Wars and Space:1999 were touchstone entertainment favourites of mine as I grew up in the 1970s. Now, to be sitting down for breakfast in the same room as two of the well-known names from those sci-fi adventures felt unique and almost unreal.

Shortly afterwards, in the main hotel lobby I encountered Dave Prowse, the man who played Darth Vader in the original Star Wars trilogy.  

Barbara Bain answers audience questions
during the Autograhica weekend, 2014

The conference was filled with other encounters and moments, including opportunities to speak briefly with Ms Bain, Mr Aldrin, Mr Baker, Mr Prowse and others. I wrote about the event in a contemporaneous blog post eight years ago.

That moment at breakfast has remained vivid in my mind, more so than if I'd taken a photograph, and far more than the most other recollections.

 

The reason for such clarity is a technique I deliberately used. It is akin to taking a detailed, mental snapshot. For I was acutely aware how impossible that moment would have seemed to my 11-year-old self; not only seeing a hero from Star Wars and a heroine from Space:1999, but simultaneously in the same hotel dining room for breakfast.

When extraordinary special moments come along in life, use this technique.  Recognise those moments for what they are - gifts in life - and intimately preserve the sights, sounds and feelings by consciously taking in as much as you can to create a snapshot memory.