On Sat­urday even­ing I gathered some friends and made the decision to go and see the new Star Trek film at the IMAX in Manchester.

Sounds like a good idea right? I thought so. We’d meet up, grab some­thing to eat, see the film and go for a few beers in the city centre. It almost went to plan …

Three of us met up at the Fab Café, the cult tv and movie themed bar on Port­land Street. That was good. A couple of jars each and we were ready to head off. Nipped into Sub­way across the road for some food and star­ted the trek (if you par­don the pun) over to the Printworks.

The show­ing was at 6.30, we got there at about 6.25 — just enough time to grab the pre-booked tick­ets and head up, adding a fourth mem­ber to our merry band. Usu­ally, a 6.30 show­ing still gives you about 20 minutes of trail­ers and adverts — so we thought. We walked into the IMAX theatre and to our hor­ror the place was full. The only seats left were the ones we really didn’t want: the ones in the front row.

Still, we sat through it — very enjoy­able film but I would like to go and see it again just to know what was going on at the other end of the screen!

So we then decided to head into town to get a couple of drinks. Bear in mind that earlier in the day, Manchester United had played Arsenal, so there was a good amount of “merry” folk in and around the vari­ous estab­lish­ments. The first pub we headed to claimed not have any glasses, so couldn’t let us in. The second was full of pre-mentioned “merry” gen­tle­men and wasn’t appealling. The third claimed that the bar was closed (this was 9.00 pm!). The fourth we tried was a branch of Revolu­tion. The boun­cer looked up and down and just said “no”. Aaaargh! Doesn’t any­one want our money?

They claimed that, because there were four of us, we were a “gang” and thus would not be allowed on the premises. Even­tu­ally, one of us explained to the nice gen­tle­men at the door that we were just four blokes who had just been to the cinema and who just wanted a pint. So, grudgingly, they let us in (after mak­ing us pay £2 just to get in! Once in there, we even­tu­ally got served and pro­ceeded to slowly savour our drinks and attempt to talk to each other. As well as watch­ing sev­eral “gangs” of people being let in … ah well.

We decided that our eardrums couldn’t cope with any more noise and headed off toward the train sta­tion to get off home. En-route, one of our mem­bers split off to go and pick his car up from a car park, only to dis­cover that the Police had cor­doned off the car park because some clever soul had decided to muck about on the roof. After a Police escort, he even­tu­ally got in his car and headed home.

Mean­while, the rest of us got to Pic­ca­dilly only to find that we had an hour to wait for our train home. Not want­ing to head back into town, we hung around the sta­tion, avoid­ing sev­eral “merry” gen­tle­men and ladies (had we been suc­cess­ful in our earlier mis­sion we may not have cared). Once on the train, we again encountered a few gen­tle­men cel­eb­rat­ing their recent win and some oth­ers who weren’t happy about it. The loud debate on the vari­ous ways in which each other could go away con­tin­ued for most of the journey.

Once back home, we con­sidered con­tinu­ing the even­ing in more famil­iar sur­round­ings but, in the end, decided that enough was enough and headed back to our vari­ous abodes.

Still, it was nice to get out.