In this issue

• This week: Ian Fleming
• Virtual Snacks
• Bizarre Searches
• Quotation and joke

This week

We were intrigued to receive an email from our old friends up at Bletchley Park Post Office a few days back, alerting us to a new First Day Cover (FDC) they’ve brought out for a new series of stamps from the Royal Mail.

It turns out that the creator of James Bond (and of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang – not many people know that), Ian Fleming, was born one hundred years ago this year. The Royal Mail have brought out a series of six commemorative stamps, each featuring the front covers of four editions of one of his books – they’ve had to make the stamps extra long to show the cover illustrations! The first-class stamps feature the first ever Bond novel, Casino Royale, and Dr No; the 54p stamps feature Goldfinger and Diamonds Are Forever; and on the 78p stamps you can see For Your Eyes Only and From Russia With Love. (Royal Mail have been quick off the mark, mind you – Fleming’s centenary isn’t until the end of May…)

Bletchley Park’s FDC has a particular twist to it, though. It features “Operation Ruthless”, a plot to seize an Enigma machine from a German naval vessel in the English Channel, devised by Fleming in 1940 when he was Personal Assistant to the Royal Navy’s Director of Naval Intelligence. A truly cloak-and-dagger operation, “Ruthless” involved a captured German bomber being deliberately ditched in the Channel with a team of five tough men on board, ready to overpower the crew of the German patrol boat sent to recover the distressed aircraft.

Most intriguingly of all, Fleming suggested that the pilot should be “a tough bachelor able to swim”, and that a German speaker should also be on the team (he suggested himself). Surely no coincidence that Bond was tough, a bachelor and an accomplished linguist.

Fleming was quite a colourful character in many ways. Educated at Eton, he was Victor Ludorum (overall best sportsman) two years running, only the second pupil ever to achieve the feat. He left Sandhurst early, not liking it, and spent several years learning languages in an attempt to pass the entry examination for the Foreign Office (which, however, he apparently never succeeded in joining). He was friends with Noël Coward, who attended his wedding in Jamaica to Anne Charteris, former wife of the second Viscount Rothermere (whom he’d been having an affair with for some time). And he built up an extensive library of books which had made a defining contribution to Western civilisation – most of them scientific or technological, but also including such eclectic titles as Mein Kampf and Scouting For Boys.

He came to fiction writing relatively late on; he was well into his forties when he embarked on his career of writing spy novels (Casino Royale was published in 1953). His ambition was to write the “spy story to end all spy stories”; the success of the Bond film franchise is testament to his success. Sadly, he died scarcely eleven years after he’d achieved publishing success, suffering a fatal heart attack in 1964 at the relatively young age of 56. In the meantime, though, he’d achieved phenomenal success, with three of his stories already in film by the time of his death, and with John F. Kennedy an avowed fan. (At a dinner at which both were present, Fleming gave Kennedy ideas for discrediting Fidel Castro, ideas which Kennedy took seriously enough to pass them on to the CIA for further consideration.) The rest of his works were also made into film, with other writers at the helm. The short story Octopussy, for example, was worked up into a feature-length screenplay by George MacDonald Fraser, author of the Flashman novels, who sadly died on 2 January.
(You can read more about Fraser on our sister site, British Newspapers Online.)

Pity they don’t have a stamp for Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, though…

Do you have anything to say about this topic? Or do you have some suggestions for other issues we might discuss in our weekly email? Why not comment and tell us?

Virtual Snacks

Just a few suggestions if you have a little time to spare:

You can read more about Ian Fleming and his works at the official Ian Fleming Publications site.

Find out more about Bletchley Park Post Office and their distinctive series of First Day Covers at the Bletchley Park Post Office website.

And here’s a link to the people who do all the James Bond stuff in real life: the British Government’s Secret Intelligence Service.

Bizarre Searches

Some strange search terms which have led people to visit British Expat recently:

• year the smurfs came on the television?
• christmas season in old england lambswool could be found in the houses
• ghostbusters half-mast flag
• mrs%2e o s house
• captain talbot and the french sloop hazard
• trump scotsman holdout
• woke up this morning lyrics blankets in a heap
• potato alex barker and sally mansfield
• lidls garlic bread
• too/so/neither/either

Till next time…
Happy surfing!

Kay & Dave
Editor & Deputy Editor
British Expat Magazine

Quotation

“My mental hands were empty, and I felt I must do something as a counterirritant or antibody to my hysterical alarm at getting married at the age of 43.”

– Ian Fleming, author (1908-64), on why he started writing as a profession.

Joke

A college graduate applies for a job as an industrial spy.

Together with several other applicants, she is given a sealed envelope and told to take it to the fourth floor.

As soon as the young woman is alone, she steps into an empty stationery cupboard and opens the envelope (first being sure to find an identical envelope to put the contents into).

Inside, a message reads: “You’re our kind of person. Report to the fifth floor.”

As the immortal Krusty the Clown would say: Hey, hey kids; as some band in a recent bad song would say: It’s Been A While. I can only apologise to the people who have been left emotionally and psychologically scarred by the passing of time since my last submission (both of you). You’re not interested in the whys and wherefores, I know. But it’s my column and, libel permitting, I’ll say what I damn (see) well choose. University is intent on screwing me out of money, so I’ve been dreaming up quality “Max & OBs” – Max and OB are dim characters from teen-soap Hollyoaks, always after a buck (that’s not rhyming slang) – and getting really drunk. I don’t remember large chunks of the last couple of months. But it’s a stereotype I have to fulfil, what can I do??

Let’s recap, for those who haven’t been paying attention much against the advice of Mrs Atwood (it’s a primary school thing). A through Y took around 6 years to complete, and we’ve (by we I mean Kay) been waiting 4 months for the saga to come to its conclusion. I would claim I’ve been on strike in sympathy with whoever else is today and their appalling, I mean just terrible, work conditions, but see above.

So we’re on to ‘Z’, which I’m taking my first break from Championship Manager (the only real reason I bought a computer) in order to write. I ask forgiveness, O great god Eidos.

There are several genuinely cultural possibilities (though U2’s Zooropa was the only real challenger), but let’s get one thing clear, eh? That’s not going to happen. It’s Zu-(“Don’t throw those bloody spears at me”)-lu. A word which, perhaps most interestingly, does not come up on spell check, brackets etc. notwithstanding. Notwithstanding is a brilliant word, and one which I was definitely not going to sign off without using at least once.

It (Zulu, you still with me?) was made in 1963 and has been shown every Bank Holiday in this country since then (occasionally set on an alternating complimentary rotation thing with Escape to Victory (qv). Not bad for a film about Welsh guys. Stanley Baker has the more well-rounded role, but it is as Michael Caine’s first high profile role that the film will always be remembered – Alfie’s antithesis, perhaps. Anyway, the fact that the record for the most Victoria Crosses ever handed out for a single battle was set at Rorke’s Drift was always going to make this a great film. Action-packed, though never drifting too far from a relatively serious study of battle tactics and heroism, Zulu is great cinema. The characterisations are as comprehensive as you could wish (by that I mean simply that you actually start to care about who lives and dies – my personal favourite being Otto, the alcoholic Missionary. Reminds me of my own Parish Priest, y’see. Sorry Father John, just having a bubble (Kay – that’s Cockernee for laffin’, which is Manc for laughing)), and the dialogue believable (which will please Quentin Tarantino). Here endeth my entry for the upcoming World’s Longest Sentence Awards, hosted by Angus Deayton I have no doubt.

It is a true epic (Jonathon Ross speak – translated, it’s really long) and I will personally provide a prize for the first person to tell britishexpat.com who narrates the closing list of names of those who died in the battle against thousands of fearsome Zulus. Not that I’m desperate to know that at least someone out there in Internet-land reads this rubbish. Still, at least it’s over now.

Hello boys and girls. Did you miss me? Since I last posted I’ve been to Canada (for slightly longer than anticipated. Bloody WWIII) and come back to Uni. Life is similar to last (academic) year, but slightly poorer and with an ass of a landlord. Drink has been taken, not least at the House Party of the Year at our place last week.

Now we’re up to ‘Y’, and nearing the end of our joint odyssey through ‘culture’. This 26-week slot has now taken somewhere around four years to complete, and I apologise for those of you left hanging on my every word. Does anyone still read this?? Oooh ooh, before I forget – watch the Forum somewhere around this page (why don’t I get a link from every other bleedin’ page like the Forum does eh? What’s so special about that, eh?) for exciting job opportunities. Actually ‘job’ might not be the right word – it’s unpaid. And ‘opportunities’ is dodgy too.

Anyway, enough waffle.

I was going to critique “(You Can’t Always Get) What You Want” by the Rolling Stones. It is, after all, fine 20th century poetry in the Bob Dylan stylee we all love so. I also remember from my youth (last week or so) a funky little comedy film called Young Einstein. I remember it being painfully funny. But I was about six.

Whilst sitting in my Film Noir seminar (ooh, a rhyme) this morning it occurred to me, as often does, that Elton John really is rather talented, and has released some ‘good tunes’ – though one suspects Bernie Taupin has been done out of a lot of credit over time. One song, in particular, touches the heart. “Your Song”.

I know it’s not much but it’s the best I can do
My gift is my song and this one’s for you

And you can tell everybody this is your song
It may be quite simple but now that it’s done
I hope you don’t mind
I hope you don’t mind that I put down in words
How wonderful life is while you’re in the world

Yours are the sweetest eyes I’ve ever seen.

Just a selection of the words (the rest are actually pretty arsey methinks) that make this one of my favourite pieces of ‘art’ ever laid down. The gorgeously full piano score and simplicity of this song (younger people may like to think of the Ben Folds Five’s “Brick”, older people may like to think of, errr, Elton John’s “Your Song”) make it just so. I can’t do it justice – I can’t describe (as with Astral Weeks, qv) exactly what it is, it’s just one of those things – some people cry at Gone With the Wind, others at weddings. In the words of Cast (remember them?) – “So don’t you think it’s good, that it takes all sorts/Don’t you think our lives would be a little bit drab, if we had the same thoughts?”

I’m off to Safeway. I’ve been back in Southampton a month, and have spent £6 on grocery shopping (and around £800 in the pub).

Toodle-oo.
[Watch out Atoz, your Mum might read your column again and send me another letter! The Ed]

I have to give a nod to X-Men: The Movie, otherwise my delectable girlfriend (hey baby) will kill me. Do not confuse the delectable Emily with the unelectable ‘Dubya’ Bush. There’s also an ‘erotic’ film called X, but I wouldn’t know anything about that.

My pretence at not knowing what to recommend for ‘X’ as something you might quite like to like if you think it might be the sort of thing you might quite like to like has been all, er… pretence (or should that be pretentious??). There was always one thing that has stood head and shoulders above the suggestions you lot (I’m talking to both of you) have come up with – XTRMNTR by Primal Scream.

Eschewing the ‘difficult sixth album’ tag, the Scream came up, in 2000, with one of the albums of the year, and certainly their personal best since 1991’s awesome Screamadelica. After ten years of drug-addled self-annihilation, with Bobby Gillespie suffering possibly (allegedly) the greatest creative slump since MC Hammer, they returned. With a vengeful edge.

The track listing reads: 1.Kill All Hippies; 2.Accelerator; 3.Exterminator; 4.Swastika Eyes; 5.Pills; 6.Blood Money; 7.Keep Your Dreams; 8.Insect Royalty; 9.MBV Arkestra (if they move kill ‘em); 10.Swastika Eyes (Chemical Brothers mix); 11.Shoot Speed/Kill Light. These people have issues! Speaking of these people, the Scream continue the trend, which has engulfed the likes of Stereo MCs and Massive Attack, leading to some very different bands being shoved unwittingly under the same umbrella, of inviting contributions from perhaps slightly more mainstream colleagues – XTRMNTR features Bernard Sumner (New Order, etc), Greg Knowles, Kevin Shields of My Bloody Valentine and Liam Howlett of the Prodigy) to name but a few. With group members coming and going at whim throughout the pre-requisitely turbulent (but apparently well-humoured) recording it’s not surprising that “Pills”, for example, teeters on the brink of collapse. Rolling Stone, that paragon of music journalism, described it as “one ball of aggression that hangs together, thanks to the band’s smarts and funk”.

The euphoria that makes Screamadelica what it is is not jettisoned altogether – it’s still very much present, but with a heavier feel. “Shoot Speed/Kill Light” is their 1991 hit “Come Together” tainted with the Metal brush and, just as in their previous best album (and to a certain degree, perhaps in Vanishing Point), it is their versatility that makes this album so goddamn likeable. Old fans will find the basics the same, slightly more cynical maybe, but still there. New fans could come from anywhere – the organised chaos that is XTRMNTR encompasses, according to Louis Pattison (writing for amazon.co.uk), industrial trance, Krautrock, hip-hop and “righteous euphoria” – clearly the best phrase to describe this album.

Creation Records went under shortly after releasing this, probably the finest album on the label (and the competition isn’t bad!!). Shame.

Hello, good evening, welcome, and goodbye. ‘Y’ will be your next morsel on these pages.

As the encroaching horizon that is ‘Z’, and the end of the greatest reign of terror this side of Genesis’s baffling stranglehold on the music-buying public of the early-mid 1980s (doesn’t it seem strange saying 1980s? What right did they have to go and change centuries??), draws nigher (I’d love to believe that was a word) – we reach ‘W’, and the greatest shock this side of Duran Duran’s baffling stranglehold on the music-buying public of the early-mid 1980s.

Waking Ned is a nice family film (save for the nudity, blasphemy, swearing, gambling…) and Wuthering Heights (the book and the Bush-ster) is always solid. But in a break with recent tradition, I take you back to the contemporaries, if that’s possible:

Two albums of the last couple of years are well worth a look, though they differ somewhat in their fanbase. Wheatus’s eponymous debut album contains the ’smash hit’ (though thankfully no ‘forthcoming smash hit singles’ – easily the most annoying thing about the teenie-pop revolution. How can it be a forthcoming smash? Take nothing for granted. Unless, of course, it’s all somehow rigged.(sharp, but not altogether surprised intake of breath drawn collectively)) “Teenage Dirtbag”, which follows on in a Bad Touch (“You and me baby ain’t nothing but mammals, so let’s do it like they do on the Discovery Channel, here we go…”) styleeeeeee. Nice. Wheatus also features “A Little Respect”, a clear front runner for Strange Cover Version Decision of the century, taking a VERY early lead. (It was originally by Erasure. Remember them? Andy and Vince. Still, I’m sure their mothers love them very much. Disclaimer: yadda yadda yadda.)

But Wheatus lose out, and have no right of appeal. There can be only one winner. Step forward, David Gray. I first came across him last year (I’m not even going to pretend to be an original fan, I wouldn’t have known him if I’d met him in the street until then. Unless, of course, he’d introduced himself and I’d followed suit and we had a pint and a nice chat somewhere convivial) with the release of “Babylon”, up there with Badly Drawn Boy’s “Disillusion” and Coldplay’s “Yellow”, and perhaps “Funky Music” by the Utah Saints (“Funky Music turns me on, it does something to my brain, get a feeling I can’t explain.” Genius) as Song of the Year contender. If we want to pick nits, it wasn’t actually from last year, so he wouldn’t have the Mercury, say. I’ve never bought the album White Ladder, but I have worn out a few other peoples’ copies! When I listened to it for the first time, it was good. It gets better each time, and is coming up fast on AtomHeartMother in my books (that one’s especially for Danbo’, who thinks I mention the Cow Album too much, as if that’s possible) – songs such as “Please Forgive Me”, “Nightblindness” (nothing to do with REM’s “Nightswimming”, though I bet Monty Python are upset they haven’t had the chance to combine the two.) and “Sail Away” equalling “Babylon” in majesty.

I saw David Gray live at the Portsmouth Guildhall last October, he played a fifteen minute version of “Sail Away”, for which the crowd were pleased to indulge him, and seemed a genuinely nice chap – after a five minute delay, for guitar techie problems, he chatted for a while then had a word with Clune, his venerable yet stupendously good drummer and returned: “Think I’ll do one on the piano now!”

White Ladder does not have a bad song on it. I wouldn’t bother too much with earlier stuff, it’s mostly quite weak (except “Wisdom”, “Late Night Radio” and a few other songs). It’s mellow, unobtrusive but doesn’t sound wrong being played loud, like so many similar albums. It fits. Wear it.

’til next we see you on Going for Gold, goodbye. Await with breath that is baited/bated (which is it?) ‘X’.