James Bond at Christmas

 Back by popular request, I wrote this a few years ago now but in the fictional World of Bond nothing goes out of date.It revolves around a local hotel which has been advertising, amongst its seasonal events what they call a 'James Bond Christmas'. 

Here goes........

Commander Bond lay under the duvet cover. The distant sounding of church bells reminded him that this was indeed Christmas Day.

He had got in at about 9.30pm from yet another of  'M's festive gatherings. It had not been that exciting. He had returned alone. Moneypenny had gone home even earlier, after all she was an old lady and no fun. M's quiche had made him a bit bilious and the dry martini's had not been enough to quell the acidity in his stomach.

He let one go under the heavy winter tog rated bedding and casually wafted it away into the gradually increasing natural light of his flat.

What to do for Christmas Day?

He swung a leg out, feeling for the thick pile of the carpet. Pulling his heavy built form upright he found that his Onesie had ridden up during the night with some constriction of his lower abdomen. It was a legitimate reason for a prolonged scratch and re-arrangement of his undercarriage.

The flat was cold and he cursed not mastering the central heating thermostat in the twenty years and more of his occupation. He had no time for manuals. 'Q' had been kind enough to show him the settings for instantaneous hot water and radiator heating. They had been very similar to the afterburner controls on Little Nelly. A nasty and expensive quarterly gas bill had been the consequence of a degree of confusion on one occasion.

A light, healthy breakfast appealed to him. Those long sessions at the Casino in recent years had ruined his physique .He had contracted and only just recovered from a nasty virus from , he suspected, the sampled contents of a small bowl of mint imperials at the coat-check counter near the toilets in Monte Carlo.

He was disappointed by the contents of the fridge. The orange juice was 'with bits' which he had bought from M&S without checking. He infinitely preferred smooth. No yoghurt, no bran or porridge oats so he settled for a lump of cheese and half a packet of cream crackers. The Onesie successfully captured any fragments of the flaky Lancashire and biscuit crumbs in its thick, luxurious velour giving the faux tiger-skin print the appearance of a dandruff outbreak.

Living the life of a bachelor, out of the normal hours of his regimented and disciplined professional assassin duties, the living room was a tip.

He stumbled over a collection of take-away cartons,pizza boxes and discarded clothing-disappointingly all his. A pint glass full of the discarded shells of pistachio's fell and rolled across the parquet floor gradually decanting its contents. A few well place martial arts kicks cleared the rest of the debris under the DFS corner suite and Ikea wall unit. The DVD's would have to be sorted later from an unruly pile. The movie of 27 Dresses at the top caused him to pause and recall how he had enjoyed the plot and sentiment of such a well structured and acted rom-com.

As Commander Bond dragged the Dyson bagless around the room he made an instinctive check for any signs of intrusion whilst he had been at M's reception. Trip wires and carefully adhered strands of his chest hair were still in situ. It was disappointing not to be the subject of any nefarious intentions during the holiday season. How was he expected to keep his hand in?

The number of Christmas cards on the mantelpiece was well down this year. This was, he mused a combination of how convincing his manufactured death had been earlier in the year resulting in many deletions by Facebook friends and the trend amongst fellow assasins to have to kill each other.

The unsigned, oversized padded card depicting an alpine scene was definitely from that rascal Blofeld. He had a decent sense of humour under that serious visage of world dominating villainy.

The morning passed quickly. Feeling peckish after his exertions of a man's comprehension of cleaning and hoovering he chipped away at the slab of ice which had consumed his freezer compartment and recovered a couple of ready-meals which would do nicely for his Christmas dinner. The combination of Tikka Massala and Hot Pot was novel but palatable. Dessert was a bit more of a challenge but the Angel Delight was soon whisked into a firm peak that briefly and erotically reminded him of past conquests.

The controllers at the 'Licenced to Kill' desk deep in the MI5 building received a message from Bond on the restricted scrambled channel and they duly sent him the TV listings for the rest of the day . He did not expect HM The Queen to expand on their skydiving antics into the Olympic Stadium in her traditional address to the nation. He knew she had enjoyed it on an altogether private level by her whoops and screams and covert and playful cupping of his groin on the descent through the late July sky over London.

Next he knew, it was dark outside the flat. He had dozed off, sprawled across the settee, and with a dribble of spittle running down his chin, a faint essence of butterscotch discernible. Annoyingly he had missed the blockbuster film and no-one had availed him of the operational details of the i-player.

The Strictly Christmas offering thrilled him for the rest of the evening. He would never be asked to participate on the dance floor because of the intricacies of his professional lifestyle.This was a major regret.  His enjoyment of Downton Abbey had been tempered by his instinctive identification of access and escape routes in the stately home and the best place to set off a diversionary explosion for maximum mayhem amongst the sinister looking below stairs staff, all ex KGB without doubt. Lady Mary was definitely a deep cover operative, for sure.

The latter part of the day was now dragging. The invitations to a 'Christmas At Home' from a selection of gangsters, sociopaths and the criminally insane remained on his antique escritoire, opened but not responded to. A threat of menace and a long monologue about blah, blah, ransom, blah, blah, extortion, blah, blah, gold reserves and the prospect of a scorching of nether regions by a high powered laser was now of some attraction when in the past it had just been part and parcel of the job.

It was a pity that he had not forged better links with those he had collaborated with on his missions. That Felix Leiter was a personable chap but obviously had problems of self image based on his frequently radical changes in appearance and skin colour.

He poured himself a Baileys over ice (chipped flakes from the freezer compartment) and gorged himself to the point of being nauseous on the After Eights, a raffle prize at 'M's with the proceeds going to support the families of disavowed agents.

James Bond contemplated starting a diplomatic incident to alleviate his boredom. A convincing non-nuclear conflagration of the Home Counties was well within his capabilities from just the contents of his lock up garage in Twickenham.  His life story, auctioned to the tabloids would keep him in the style in which the public perceived him to exist.

In reality and out of abject loneliness he found that crying himself to sleep on Christmas night was a form of light and therapeutic relief. 

As always, he firmly believed that it would be so much better next year..........