When I was a boy growing up in Hollywood, Birmingham we played Star Trek. I always played Spock because of my pale white skin, my straight fringed black hair and the shape of my eyes. It wasn’t just something I chose, that’s how a lot of the kids viewed me. Some of them saw me as Bruce Lee or Jai from Tarzan but I liked it best when they saw the Spock in me.

I developed a cool, emotionless demeanour, perfected the Vulcan nerve pinch and we went around the streets on our Raleigh Grifters and Choppers searching for lost cats. I greeted my friend, aka Capt James T Kirk, with a ‘Live long and prosper.’ I wasn’t very good with the eyebrow but I was good at pretending to be highly logical and intelligent. We made Lego phasers and used a Philips tape recorder for a Tricorder on which we taped pop songs off the radio like ‘Blame It On The Boogie’ and ‘Oliver's Army’.

So goodbye, Leonard Nimoy. Thanks for everything including:

Your photographs
Your support of equal pay for women
In Search of … (especially the one on Bigfoot)
Your cool, sinister role in Get Smart
Invasion of the Body Snatchers

Now that I mention Invasion of the Body Snatchers, **SPOILER ALERT** I do find it remarkable how Donald Sutherland’s closing screech reminds me of Goya’s Saturn Devouring His Son. Which brings us nicely to the picture above of somebody’s son running through the light streaming across a spanish square in the afternoon.