Sc-fi devotee George Clarke went boldly where he had never gone before — to a Star Trek convention in Leicester. Soon, he was experiencing what seemed to be a close encounter of the third kind with a voluptuous female being wearing the blue uniform that identified her as one of the USS Enterprise’s science officers. Was she a Vulcan, like Mr Spock? No, her ears weren’t pointy. Turned out he’d met Kath, who belonged to that devoted breed of Star Trek fans known as Trekkies. George quickly beamed himself into her futuristic life, and the couple’s romance moved at warp speed. Months later (stardate 1982) they married at Barnsley Town Hall — on one of the few weekends when they were not booked to attend Star Trek or other sci-fi conventions.
George, 71, and Kath, 79, moved to a first-floor apartment at Loxley Park in January last year from their house in Walkley. They love our lifts, which have large circular ceiling lights as in the USS Enterprise’s Transporter Room.
“It’s delightful here,” says Kath. “The lifts are great for me because about a year ago I became bedridden for a while due to a trapped nerve in my right knee. Walking became difficult, so continuing to live in our three-storey house was no longer practical. Our daughter, Robin, did lots of research and recommended that Loxley Park was the best place for us to live. Everything is very accessible, and it has been easy for us to make new friends.”
George was born near Montreal, Canada, soon after his parents had emigrated there from Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe).
“My dad,” he says, “was from Nuneaton, and went to Rhodesia in the 1950s, where he met mum. They didn’t like the weather in Canada and moved back to Rhodesia — but political upheavals there meant it was not a safe environment to bring up me and my brother and sister, so we came to England: first Weymouth, then Leicester.”
George’s first job after leaving school was in the textile industry, working as a colour technologist. Towards the end of his career, he was employed by the Ministry of Defence, testing fabrics, a job he retired from when he was 60. By that time, he and Kath were living in Bristol. In 2014, they moved to Sheffield to be nearer Robin, her husband, Craig, and their children Evie and Alden. They live at Oughtibridge, which is not far from Loxley Park.
“Our Trekkie lifestyle ended when Robin was born,” says Kath, who is from Goldthorpe, near Barnsley. “But after she had grown up, George and I became fans of real ale, and began attending beer festivals. We very much like that Loxley Park is near The Wisewood Inn, which serves home-brew. Every Tuesday night we get a taxi there and back.
“George still has the ray gun he took along to Trekkie events, and the trilby he was wearing when we first met. I slipped my name and phone number into the hat band, but he didn’t see the message. Fortunately, he invited me to a party at his house — when we drank a lot, and talked about Klingons.”
