Geckos, gardens and Gib

This young gecko had a narrow escape when he made a slight movement.

Out of the corner of his eye, Partner noticed it, and quickly picked up a shoe to give it an almighty whack. Fortunately he put on his glasses before he did and realised it was a gecko and not a cockroach.

Gecko was left alone to wander around the stone archway of the front door.

Lucky gecko

Later than day, young gecko had moved the full length of the kitchen ceiling, upside down, and made his way half way across the bedroom ceiling. We lay in bed, fascinated, watching him crawling happily across. What amazing suction they have – and – no fear of heights either. Our very own wildlife programme at home for free.

I like geckos. I like to think they eat cockroaches, which is a good reason for avoiding spraying nasty toxins around my home. I would rather the geckos eat unpoisoned cockies. At one point we must have had a colony of geckos as there seemed to be bits of dead cockroach legs on the bathroom floor every morning.

Geckos also eat spiders and mosquitoes. Now I’m happy with them eating the mozzies too, but not so keen on them eating the spiders. After all, spiders eat flies, and I like to think every spider in my house is a money spider. I guess that’s the natural cycle though.

But I did see a couple of pretty striped spiders who had escaped the attention of young gecko so hopefully they found a safe place to catch flies. Meanwhile the last I saw of young gecko was when he had travelled into the bathroom and was winding his way around the railings on the windows. Cute.

During the day, I saw a far larger one shooting around the garden but he had disappeared before I had chance to even think of a photo.

However, in the heat of August, here in the garden, is my escarole, still going strong courtesy of my wonderful neighbour – and – new parsley seeds that I scattered from the old plant seem to have sprung into life. The mysteries of gardening are beyond me, but if it works and survives great. Letting plants go to seed, look scruffy, and then saving the seed, or letting them reseed themselves is one of the many things I have learned here in Spain. Hardly difficult, but a more natural way of life than tidying those scruffy plants.

Escarole and new parsley shoots

Geckos weren’t the only contented animals we saw. En route, there is what looks like a horse/donkey animal sanctuary. I wish. If only I could do that too.

Happy donkeys and horses

But still, geckos and spiders are a start.

Continuing with the animal theme, I visited our vet for some Cox-2 inhibitors (NSAIDs) for our dog. And took a couple of pix of our former flat where we rented ten years ago, and the green park we looked over.

Third floor flat

I found it very strange living above the trees on the third floor. Most unnerving. Little Roughseas would climb trees, but live above them? We would watch the locals wander into the park every morning with their bottles and their joints and they happily passed the morning away causing no trouble to anyone. The park hasn’t changed, but the people are no longer there.

Peaceful – empty – park

What doesn’t change is the sea. On the way up, the beautiful shimmering, glistening sea.

Sunlight on the Med

And when we left Gibraltar, what amazing light.

Gibraltar North Face

But on the way back – where had Gib gone? Who had put down a filmy cover and stolen her?

Hey! Where is Gib?

Ah, phew, here she is. Here we are in the boring old queue for the frontier, looking at western beach. Good to know the Spaniards hadn’t towed you out to sea after all.

Enjoying the sun at western beach

Courtesy of The Pink Agendist I discovered there had been a suspected bomb in Gib last night.

Apparently a rucksack was exploded remotely by the Gib Reg bomb squad and the frontier was closed for three hours.

Good to live in a safe place like Gib? But great to have the Royal Gib Reg and all the other armed forces on hand. Round of applause for people doing a very special job.

But while all this excitement was going on, we were happily ensconced in King’s Bastion Leisure Centre, celebrating my partner’s first day of freedom after being sacked due to lack of work. There was a Bourne film advertised so we happily went along.

Another unfull cinema, and a good film – The Bourne Legacy.

Plot: Nasty CIA are still messing with people’s heads and turning them into robots and then deciding to kill the ones that malfunction. Or something like that. But one always gets away and needs to be chased.

No Matt Damon as Jason Bourne, who was no notable absence in this film, but a great new character in Aaron Cross played by Jeremy Renner.

Top marks to Renner, who I really liked. Looked like a cross between Steve McQueen and Daniel Craig, so not a bad start.

Rachel Weisz is OK as female lead, but the character struck me as being a bit naive. You work in a government lab, faffing around with DNA and don’t realise what you are doing? Even though you have a PhD? Huh? Nowhere near as good as Olga Kurylenko who played the excellent Camille in the last Bond film (Quantum of Solace). That’s a comment on characters not actresses. At least I think it is. Speaking of Bond, Skyfall is due to be released in October/November this year depending on your part of the world.

Back to The Bourne Legacy. Partner met a couple we had noticed in the cinema last night. She liked it, the kids liked it, he didn’t. That’s 3/4. We liked it. 2/2. So that’s 5/6 on the scale of nothing to do with rotten tomatoes, so worth a watch if you like a shoot the shit out of them action film. NB, it includes a long motorbike chase. Well these sort of films always include some sort of long chase don’t they?

If you want an incisive critical review, there are plenty on the internet. They basically say the same as mine but take longer to read.

Sources: The Pink Agendist (as cited above) and the Gibraltar Chronicle.

Invasion! Diplomacy! Spies!

Yes, yet again.

It seemed the Guardia Civil thought it would be a fine old idea to invade British Gibraltar territorial waters and arrest, take to Spain, and then detain a couple of locals, ie Gibraltarians. Oh and confiscate some of their gear too. (No not gear as in drugs, just legal equipment on boats).

Her Majesty’s Government of Gibraltar has received confirmed reports that officers of the Guardia Civil vessel Rio Ceden boarded and took control of a Gibraltar registered vessel in British Gibraltar Territorial Waters and then forcibily conveyed it and its occupants to Algeciras at high speed and without navigational lights.

They subsequently confiscated perfectly legal equipment aboard the vessel. The individuals aboard the vessel were not suspected of being involved in any illicit activity of any kind.

This, and subsequent quotes from the HM Government of Gibraltar press office website.

Good to know that you can’t even safely sail in your own three-mile limit without the Spaniards coming to give you grief huh?

Official reports received by the Government state that the Guardia Civil even turned off the navigational lights on the Gibraltar vessel that they boarded and on their own vessel as well in an attempt to avoid detection. This points to the fact that they must have known that they were acting in British Gibraltar Territorial Waters where Spain has no jurisdiction.

It is important to recall that the Civil Guard commenced these illegal incursions in 2009, unrelated to any fishing dispute and that they have continued at regular intervals ever since. Indeed, at one point Spanish Civil Guards even entered the Port of Gibraltar and landed on our soil. This has been the case regardless of who was in Government in Spain or in Gibraltar.

Except of course, one should point out that regardless of politics, Spanish governments of whatever colour continue to bleat about Gibraltar. How much of this is Guardia Civil policy and to what extent are they doing their job at the behest of the politians?

This belligerent act of provocation by the para-military armed forces of Spain, akin to the actions taken by them previously in respect of merchant shipping and pleasure craft in our waters, cannot be allowed to go by unchallenged.

In this instance, to add to the gravity of the situation, two Gibraltarians, British citizens, were illegally detained and forcibly transferred from Gibraltar to Spain across the international dividing line in the Bay of Gibraltar. This criminal false arrest and illegal detention continued for almost two hours.

Now I do think that is rather naughty. I must say. What right does the Guardia Civil have to arrest Gibraltarians in Gibraltar? Of course, Spain doesn’t recognise our waters. Or even Gibraltar as far as that goes. So of course it is ok, to gaily sail up, board someone else’s boat and cart them off to another country.

According to Spain, the Gibraltarians were illegally fishing for tuna in breach of EU regulations. And as territorial waters weren’t mentioned in the Treaty of Utrecht 300 years ago, Spain considers they don’t exist around Gibraltar.

Funny how the Treaty of Utrecht is invoked by Spain for one reason and disregarded for others…

Remember people, the Guardia Civil are armed. They are the civil guard and colloquially known as Franco’s boys. They were the ones who would cart off your friends and family for imprisonment and torture when someone informed on you (irrelevant whether or not the accusation was true). You do not argue with them.

I can give you the ins and outs of each side of the arguments, but basically, Spanish armed civil guard officers arrested Gibraltarians a few hundred yards off Europa Point (Gibraltar) and ‘invited’ them to go to Spain. Yeah, right, and I’d argue with armed Guardia Civil officers at night – or any time.

Simon Hughes, Deputy Leader of the UK Liberal Democrats, has been in Gib this week.

“I will take back a clear message to UK Ministers: Britain must be tough and unbending in insisting that Spain respects international law,” said Simon Hughes MP.

Mr Hughes added,

“But my immediate message to my UK Ministerial colleagues on my return to London this week is that Britain must be tough and unbending in insisting that Spain respects international law. Incidents like that last Friday night are unacceptable.

The UK Government must make sure that the Spanish Government gets this message at the highest level. Madrid must understand that unwarranted interference with lawful activities by Gibraltarians should stop once and for all.

Spain is a civilised country with a proud history. It does itself no favours in the international community when provocative and unjustified actions are taken like that in Gibraltar waters on Friday night.”

Let’s leave the last word on this issue with the government press release:

The time has now come for action, not simply written protests from London to Madrid. The United Kingdom needs to ask itself how it would act if these events had been perpetrated by Argentine paramilitary forces in the oil and fish rich waters around the Falkland Islands or in the areas around the coast of the British Isles.

Ah, there we have it. Our waters are not rich enough for the UK to actually DO ANYTHING. Quick Gibbos!! Discover some oil. Now!!

I am beginning to wonder if Gibraltarian loyalty to the UK is an annoying nuisance to the powers that be……..

Monkeys to watch over us
(For non Brit readers – there is a legend than when the monkeys (apes) leave Gib, then Gib will cease to be British)

Ironically a couple of other bloggers have raised related issues.

Liz, over at ec-cen-tric asked a pertinent question. Does talking actually solve problems?

Well, it is doing stuff all so far, quite frankly, in the case of Gibraltar.

Our Governor, Sir Adrian Johns, said gunboat diplomacy is no longer appropriate. No? So what is? Because sure as hell a few little verbal protests are doing jack shit nada.

Slightly more broadly, Pigpen wrote about what he wanted from his politicians (and it wasn’t their views on Britain has no talent)

Are we all just really full of rhetoric these days and incapable of any sensible or decisive action?

In Len Deighton’s world, his spies are always full of action. Cynical, tired, jaded, but pull out all the stops.

A few good reads

I read ‘An Expensive Place to Die’ the other day – it was so good I had it finished within 24 hours.

British spy in Paris is set up to deliver American nuclear info to Chinese via some crazy guy who creates strange sexual dossiers on powerful people. It sounds weird, but believe me it was good. Gotta read it again before I take it back to the library. Published 1967 – and already talking about Chinese world domination.

And… The Tailor of Panama. I saw the film years ago while staying at my mother’s in the UK. It had the delectable Pierce Brosnan of Bond fame (this is a short vid link), so clearly it was worth a watch. Brosnan is like Richard Gere, far better as a sleazy baddy than a good guy.

I watched the film in Spanish as well, I bought the DVD, I still enjoy it. And then, browsing in the library near D for Deighton I noticed C for le Carre. The Tailor of Panama was written by Le Carre – although why was I surprised?

Great film, great book. English spy goes out to Panama and inveigles a British tailor into reporting on non-existent resistance to the government. It always reminded me of Graham Greene’s Our Man In Havana, and at the end of Carre’s novel – he mentioned that as his inspiration.

There are some changes between the book and the film, but either way, good read, and good film. Try either or both if you haven’t done.

XPD – I haven’t yet read, next one.

And – a quick food fix. For vegetarians out there, these salami slices are superb. And, on the right, Morrison’s yeast extract on toast. Also recommended. (I think Americans call it nutritional yeast – I suppose it is really, nutritional I mean).

Veg salami, eaten far too quickly. Fortunately a jar of yeast extract lasts longer.

Monday, Monday (la la, la la la)

Courtesy of The Mamas and The Papas, except before pop experts correct me apparently it is ba-da ba-da. Oh well, I always sing la la to songs as I never listen to words.

But not just any Monday because today is also Birthday, Birthday. Glorious blaze of self-promotion there.

Every year it strikes me as bizarre to get greetings from people I’ve never met over the internet, and nothing from people I do know.

So thanks to the ones who have already sent good wishes to me (and my partner, whose birthday was yesterday), very much appreciated. In the FaceBook days, one would get amazing greetings from all over the world, which may seem pretty meaningless but it still took time for people to notice and type out a message. Despite our lack of presence, I thought I had better check on Partner’s page yesterday – and – more greetings from kind-hearted souls.

Not being friend, family or party orientated – what do two mid 50s do on their birthdays?

Take the dog for a walk up the side of the Alameda gardens past the huge olive trees.

Walking by the olive trees

Thought I better add that one for Pippafans as an interim pic until I post on his blog.

We watched a film, kindly lent to us by one of Partner’s workmates.

It was brilliant. I am not into any sort of violence, drugs, or gangland culture but this was one good film. It made Reservoir Dogs look soft.

One of the great things about good British films is that they are incredibly minimalist – which makes them all the harder hitting.

This was very hard hitting. Literally.

Plot: Well, it’s based on Carlton Leach who I’d not heard of, but I had heard of football violence.

There can’t be anyone who lived in the UK in the late 70s and 80s who wasn’t aware of football violence. And this was every week, not just the odd international.

I went to a local derby between Everton and Liverpool in the late 70s and there was nothing. Not that I could see the match very well with my poor eyesight and no contact lenses back then but still, it was a good event with no violence. Or maybe we didn’t see it.

Every weekend I would travel home from university and on the return journey I always met a group of Man Utd supporters – they were lovely. I was pretty wary at first, and this was in the days of closed compartments, but we just chatted away until they got out at St Helens. I became quite sad when there was an away match and there were no nice lads to brighten the journey. Who knows if they were thugs? I don’t.

Early 80s, I went to see Leeds United v Newcastle. Now this was the stuff violence was made of. There was a fair amount of antagonism between the supporters of the two teams anyway, and they didn’t keep it off pitch either.

Kevin Keegan, playing for Newcastle, was pelted first with tiny items, and then with cans. I think they stopped the game at one point. It was also the period when ‘hooligans’ used to chuck ball bearings under horses’ feet rendering mounted police totally useless, which, sadly we saw when we left the ground at the end of the match.

We beat a hasty retreat, especially when we noticed the fires that had been started on the grass area around the outside of Elland Road (Leeds Utd home ground). In fact it even merits a mention on Wiki – match of October 1982. Always good to attend historic events I find.

Back to the film. This was based on membership of the West Ham football firm (Inter City Firm).

I always thought Millwall were the hardest toughest ones. Either way, all the supporters of London clubs were ‘ard as nails – Chelsea, Arsenal, Millwall, West Ham – do hope I haven’t missed any out there as I would hate them to target my blog.

But looking at Wiki again, apparently the Leeds United Service Crew has a reputation for being the most notorious hooligan firm in the history of English football. Phew! That’s good, wouldn’t want to be outdone by all those London clubs.

More Wiki:

The first instance of football violence is unknown, but the phenomenon can be traced back to the 14th century England.

The first recorded instances of football hooliganism in the modern game allegedly occurred during the 1880s in England, a period when gangs of supporters would intimidate neighbourhoods, in addition to attacking referees, opposing supporters and players. In 1885, after Preston North End beat Aston Villa 5-0 in a friendly match, both teams were pelted with stones, attacked with sticks, punched, kicked and spat at. One Preston player was beaten so severely that he lost consciousness and press reports at the time described the fans as “howling roughs”.

It’s so good to be a world leader at something isn’t it? Well, in the past anyway.

In the film, Mr Leach moves from bashing the shit out of people at football matches, to bouncing (bashing the shit out of more people) to the drugs industry, crime protection (uh? contradiction in terms) to involvement with torture and murder, I think, as I did get a bit lost with the amount of rather sad bodies that appeared in this film and who was doing what to who. I’m not very good on keeping up with films. Women (blonde of course) take their clothes off, are ‘gagging for it’, and wives/partners get slapped around.

The film ends with the 1995 Rettendon Murders which I only vaguely remember. (Rettendon is in Essex – which was probably why I couldn’t understand the accents half the time).

Good points about the film? There were lots of Land Rovers in it. British films should always have Land Rovers in and this did well, spotted – 1) Range Rover (the murder vehicle), 2) Defender (driver discovered the bodies in the RR), and 3) a Series earlier.

What else? Realistic (sadly). Succinct. Gripping – ie I didn’t fall asleep. Well filmed.

Directed by Julian Gilbey and running time is 114 minutes.

It’s based on the book by Carlton Leach called Muscle which he wrote in 2003. Should a former crim receive money from a book and film rights? Who is to say? I’m not arguing with him. Either way, a great film despite my criticism of the subject matter. You don’t have to agree with a film to acknowledge it is good.

Oh and today, well just another manic – birthday – Monday. (courtesy of The Bangles).

Opened up the sandwich and salad bar, read all your lovely blogs, and now have a pile of stuff to do……

The salad pots get more exotic!

Grilled and marinated pimientos, stuffed curried egg, tomato, cucumber, olives, potato salad – capers and onion marinated in red wine vinegar.

ETA a cheerful party song after Phil’s comment:

Contraband

What an appropriate film to be showing in the tobacco-smuggling hot-spot of Gibraltar.

We’ve been fans of Mark Wahlberg since getting Shooter on DVD a few years ago.

Seeing Contraband advertised recently and featuring Wahlberg and Kate Beckinsale (who I always thought was brilliant in Shooting Fish – and – why doesn’t she look any older?) was a good start.

Ringing up the cinema, I discovered it was not the prohibitive £20 we had thought, but a fiver each.

Supper was prepared in advance, dog was walked, and out we went for an evening’s heady entertainment.

Main Street on Sunday evening

We hadn’t been to the cinema before so we joined the popcorn queue for our tickets.

I wandered off to ask an usher where to buy tickets and partner asked the same of the woman in front of him in the popcorn queue. We arrived at the ticket place together and a woman magically appeared to sell us our tickets (she hadn’t been there before which was why we joined the popcorn queue, it was the only place selling anything).

Next I asked the usher where we could buy a drink while we waited. I’m thinking dress circle in the theatre here not popcorn and coke at the cinema. Downstairs in the bar …. I decided I wasn’t that interested in a drink.

We entered the virtually empty cinema and sat at the front to stretch our legs. Something started happening on the extremely large screen and we realised we were a little too near so promptly ran to the back. Leg room made no difference as there was plenty. I followed the example of the other two occupants of the cinema and draped my legs over the chair in front.

Plot: complicated, but I’m the sort of person who finds the Sound of Music complicated and usually spend most of the film asking whoever is next to me what is happening.

This was so complicated that I figured if I did that neither of us would get what was happening, and I could read about it later on the tinties. Which is what I did and so can you if you are interested enough. (Link above)

It’s a smuggling heist thing with the usual family threats. Beckinsale played the stereotypical victimised woman who received more than her fair share of threats and violence which was something of a waste of a good actress.

Wahlberg was pretty much his tough hard-nosed self. After watching this we both thought he would have made a much better Jason Bourne than Matt Damon.

Verdict: eminently watchable, some slightly too clever camera angles and panning, but the Panama Canal was spectacular. The action was suitably convincing, characters were pretty good, so who cares about a plot?

One of those clever film shot things

It didn’t get a particularly good Rotten Tomatoes review, but neither did Shooter. Some of the critics slagged it off, so that made it worth a look anyway.

The cinema was superb, and with the exception of the other couple in there, it was like having our own private viewing for a tenner.

busy, busy, busy – not

And it’s five or ten minutes walk away from home. It’s in a converted military bastion that is now a leisure centre, and more pix of that to come on a later post.

Amazing conversion

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But to consider the real contraband for a moment. The Guardia Civil is still stopping every moped under the sun while the car smugglers continue.

How do we know? Well apart from the black plastic bags that helpfully litter the place because the smugglers are too idle to put them in bins (fortunately as we pick them up for free to pick up after the dog), we see them doing it. (The bags had dropped off at one point, but they have increased again.)

We walked around the corner to approach our block the other day and there was a worky sorting out his tools. Or so I thought. Partner was a bit more observant and noticed he was stashing his fags away in the boot, the tools were a neat disguise. Very clever. Or maybe he was a smuggling worky?

How about these cases? extracted from Govt press releases.

A 31 year old Spanish national was arrested by HM Customs after Customs Officers searched a Spanish registered vehicle under her control in a car park near Catalan Bay Road; 15,000 cigarettes (75 cartons) were found in the car.

Two Spanish nationals, both resident in La Linea, were arrested after being found in possession of commercial quantities of cigarettes in the area of Eastern Beach. 4,000 cigarettes (20 cartons) and two Spanish registered motorcycles were seized by HM Customs during the incident.

In a joint anti-smuggling operation executed by the Gibraltar Defence Police and HM Customs, 24 year old Victor Manuel FERNANDEZ Ruano was arrested in the area of Western Beach. He was seen approaching the frontier fence carrying a number of packages. On being challenged, he attempted to escape by entering the sea and swimming to Spain. He was apprehended and subsequently charged with unlawful exportation of goods, obstructing a Customs Officer and with Tobacco Act offences. 5,400 cigarettes (27 cartons) were seized in the operation. Fernandez was remanded in custody overnight and sentenced to fines totalling £2,400.

The limit is one carton per person, just to be clear.

Picky journalism/press officer quote of the day – you shouldn’t start sentences with numbers, unless they are in writing.

Bond. James Bond

The immortal line in the 007 films.  As distinctive as the theme music.

In my quest for light reading at the local library (I’ve now read all the Chris Ryans, Graham Greenes, and various others) I suddenly chanced on the Bond novels by Ian Fleming.

For some reason I never read them in my youth although I must have ploughed happily through every single Saint (Simon Templar) novel by Leslie Charteris.

Needless to state I haven’t been able to read them in the correct chronological order which is a bit of a nuisance as each book opens by referring to the previous one.

However having said that, they are all stand-alone stories anyway, so it is a minor inconvenience rather than a major disaster.  A bit like not being able to read all the Len Deighton Bernard Sampson tales in the right order.

So one of the things I did do over the brief weekend at the finca, was to polish off Goldfinger.  I think the others I read before that, were Casino Royale, Diamonds are Forever, and From Russia, With Love.  Now what has fascinated me, is how much better the books are than the extravagant block-buster films that were made so many years ago.  Somewhat like reading a Robert Ludlum Bourne novel and wondering what on earth it had to do with the Bourne films apart from the name.

To be fair to the Bond films, they did stick to the basic plot – just changed the situation, location and added a few more characters.  To put it mildly.

But back to the book(s).  Overall, they are so much tighter, well written, with a good plot, no superfluous drivel – and each one throughout the series seems to get even harder and tougher.  The character is perfectly painted.  And while I don’t agree with the so-called womanising approach – it doesn’t read like that in the books.  He meets intelligent attractive women and has sex with them, usually one or maybe two per novel.  Or turn it round the other way, one or two intelligent attractive women meet an intelligent attractive man, ie James Bond and have sex with him.  OK so maybe he is irresistible.

Which probably explains Sean Connery’s amazing success in the films.  One of my schoolfriends met him at Gleneagles, she was working there at the hotel in her early 20s and he was obviously staying to play golf.  He was probably around her father’s age and I swear if she could have found a way to throw herself at his feet she would have done.

She sat in my parent’s kitchen chatting to my mum and me (we had gone to school together since age five so we knew each other’s parents pretty well too) and Sean came up in the conversation.  “Oh my god,’ she said. ‘He is just so absolutely gorgeous. Oh he is so sexy, oh he is …. etc etc’ and her eyes just glazed over with a dreamy remembrance of the days she serviced his bedroom in Gleneages.  She was a chambermaid, I hasten to add.

Back to Goldfinger.  It was apparently the third film to be made in 1964, (the book dates from 1959), and was an amazing financial success – it had a budget of $3M, which it recouped in two weeks, grossing a total of $125M at the box office. Incredible. It was also the first gadgety film, which was obviously popular at the time, but to me lead to endless boring stunts.

The book, on the other hand, sticks to guns and knives – with the exception of Oddjob’s amazing hat. There is some dialogue – but it is curt and to the point.  There is a lot of descriptive narration, but the story keeps moving and the pace is fast. Even to me, a non-golf player, the chapters where Bond and Goldfinger were playing for ten thousand dollars (not the gold bar of the film) were well contrived and keep the reader in suspense waiting for the denouement.

My partner read Goldfinger (and all the other Bond books) some 30 years ago.  ‘I love the bit about being squeezed through the aeroplane window like a tube of toothpaste,’ he said casually when we were discussing the book.  How on earth can someone remember a description from a book they read so long ago?  But perhaps they can if the imagery created by the prose was good enough.

One of the strengths of the last two films (Casino Royale and Quantum of Solace), has been to get away from the gadgets, and the terribly boring scenes (to me) where people seem to chase around on futuristic machines underground rushing to kill each other before the whole place blows up.

The opening of Casino Royale was wonderful – even moreso if you remember the old Callan series.  I can never watch those opening moments without thinking of Callan and Edward Woodward.  Demolishing half of Venice towards the end was the film’s weakest point, but the final ending was good, very good, as Bond (Daniel Craig) shoots Mr White, and utters the immortal words when White asks who he is.

I use Casino Royale as an example because I have seen it more recently, but however good the film is, it seems there is always a boring section.  But in the books – there isn’t a boring moment, and I struggle to put them down to do something mundane like cooking or shopping or cleaning.  Much better to allocate a few hours and read straight through.

And for those of you who wanted to listen to Dame Shirley singing – you can look it up on Youtube as well as I can.  Instead here is the rather nice front cover of the hardback from the library. The golden eyes are set in a skull.

Gotta go, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service calls. As do some more tedious duties.  Which will win???