Wednesday, 6 November 2019

On 007 and Vital Components.

I’ve never been much of a fan of James Bond movies, but lately I thought I’d give the Daniel Craig incarnation a try just in case my life has been missing a vital component. Tonight’s member of the esteemed canon was Skyfall.

Now, the thing about James Bond movies is that they’re an exercise in so thrilling the audience with dastardly deeds, thrills and spills, bad guys and good coming to gut-wrenching conclusions, and glamorous women taking showers-for-two, that they fail to notice occasional plot holes the size of Jupiter. In tonight’s offering, for example, it was never explained how James managed to be shot in the chest, fall several hundred feet into a gorge from the roof of a moving train, plunge into a raging torrent that would easily have despatched an elephant, get carried over the most gigantic cataract, and then turn up in a quiet beach-front bar sipping pina coladas and musing on whether life would be better spent with pipe, slippers and the Big Book of Daily Mail Crosswords.

4 Across: The sound a gun makes when you pull the trigger. Four letters. B-blank-N-blank.

That one should keep him guessing for as long as it takes to empty a bottle of 20-year-old Speyside malt.

Ah, well, at least it gave me something to make a bit of a post about. I’ve had nothing to say lately, and since I have no Big Book of Daily Mail Crosswords to keep me occupied during the long autumn evenings, writing is about the only vital component available to me. Watching a James Bond movie couldn’t quite compete, although it was interesting that M died in tonight’s blockbuster. I gather that doesn’t happen in most of them.

(I have written quite a lot of emails to the priestess this week, though. The possibility still exists that she might be coming to visit for the sole purpose of establishing once and for all what colour my eyes are. Why she doesn’t just ask I can’t imagine.)

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