On Her Majesty’s Other Service

Come list to me and I’ll tell to you

    A tale but you must never

Breathe a word to anyone

    Regarding this endeavour

For if the world should hear of it

    Then surely I shall sever

Your gossipping heads from your scrawny necks       

    And silence you forever.

I was stationed in the Middle East,

    Bahrain to be precise,

As adjutant to Major William

    Peter Watkins-Price.

Now Watkins-Price let slip one day

    That he and Captain Hoare

Were expecting a special delivery

    To be delivered to their door.

But when I asked for details

    The two men looked amused

And I felt that sense of something

    Far more deeply interfused.

I duly signed for the package

    As I’d been asked to do

And took it to the Major, saying:

    “Major, it’s for you.”

“Thank you, Wilkins,” he replied,

    Tucking it into his pocket.

“Close the door on your way out, please,

    “And make sure that you lock it.”

But, being a nosey parker,

    I listened in and heard

Captain Hoare, through the door,

    Exclaim, “Well ’pon my word!”

What was in that package?

    I’ll bet you’re dying to know.

Be patient and I’ll tell you

    If you give me half a mo.

The very next day, the Major

    And the Captain done a bunk;

There was no sign of Hoare’s briefcase

    No sign of the Major’s trunk.

They’d taken their belongings

    Except the package that I’d signed for

And I was damned if I could fathom

    What they’d left the thing behind for,

Until I opened it and saw

    What the package did contain:

Secret plans to overthrow

    The Hakim of Bahrain!

It was written in code, like a novel,

    Written by the famous

Wit and raconteur who’s known

    By the name of Kingsley Amis.

And to make matters grubbier

    The fiend had had the gall

To plagiarise another’s work

    And call it Thunderball.

I vowed to scupper the duo’s plans,

    I didn’t waver or say, ‘Shall I?’

For we were in the middle of war

    And Bahrain was our ally.

I warned the Adjutant-General,

    Who, appalled by such insurgency,

Duly put on his hat and coat

    And declared a state of emergency.

He said, “We’ll get these traitors, Wilkins,

    “We’ll stop these seditious swine!”

And pointing at the blower, he barked:

    “Get me 999!”

We rode off in our vehicles

    To search for these pariahs,

In fire engines, ambulances

    And a host of Black Marias.

We found them at the border –

    My orders were just to catch them –

But, fired by a higher calling,

    I determined to dispatch them.

I shot them both in the back of the head

    And now I’m known as “The One”,

“Allah’s trusty lieutenant”,

    “The Man With The Golden Gun”.

I’m proud to say I saved the day

    And did it on my own,

And that’s why every hakim

    Now sits easy on his throne.

The Seven Most Dangerous People In The World

Part I: The People He Isn’t

There was Edgar from The Netherlands,

Whose truly dreadful deeds

Included earnest pillage

And the massacre of the Swedes,

Not forgetting Ms Guðmundsdóttir,

Commonly known as Björk,

Who divers times defrauded

The Lords Spiritual of York;

And Mr Pym of Ludlow,

Whose only saving grace

Was frying his victims in the dark

So they never saw his face.

As for Gilda Harrison,

’Tis said she had the gall

Not only to rob Peter

But also to burgle Paul;

While Charlie Chin, the chemist,

Contrived a cunning plan

To pour acid over Douglas

And dissolve the Isle of Man.

Sue Barlow had a novel way

To reward those who’d been toiling;

She took them out in a pea-green boat

And drowndéd the whole boiling.

But compared to ’orrible Auric,

They pale against his prime –

Being merely minor miscreants

In the pantheon of crime.

Part 2: The Man Himself - Then

Dangerous?  I’d say so!

For even Danger cringes

When Auric puts his boots on

And begins his bullion binges.

He’s appalling at gin rummy,

He has no sense of fairness,

And, though gauche in his golfing gear,

Betrays no self-awareness.

According to his sister,

The gorgeous gamine, Gretel,

He’s absolutely potty

About dense and ductile metal;

So palpably potty,

So far out of his box,

The dunderheaded duffer

Plans to break into Fort Knox!

Part 3: The Same Man - Now

Who took the steps to stop this loon

From whom all sense absconded?

Why, Madam, since you care to ask,

The answer is: James Bond did.

Alas, poor Auric, you no longer

Strut great history’s stage,

You’ve gone from powerful player

To faint footnote on the page,

Remembered without affection,

A man whose heart was cold;

Whose brain was made of bubblegum

But whose finger was made of gold.

The Black Brigand!

When misty Goat comes up the stair

And points a hoof at sky-drawn Bear,

Oh mercy, Lord, I see him there!

They sing and dance, they are a pair,

The Brigand and the dancing bear!

The Brigand and the dancing bear!

        The Black Brigand!

Bad by day and worse by night,

His hat was black, his face was white,

His boots were laced up nice and tight:

        The Black Brigand!

Nobody knew where he came from—

He kept that secret with aplomb!

But he sure was a gentilhomme:

        The Black Brigand!

Rogue by day and devil by night,

His snorting horse was dark, not light,

And he was of prodigious height:

        The Black Brigand!

He liked a strong black cup of tea

And bouncing ladies on his knee,

And never, ever went to sea:

        The Black Brigand!

He had no sense of right and wrong,

Collected fingers, loved a song,

And struck the hours with a gong:

        The Black Brigand!

Pull the buggy, speed the plough,

Beat the horses, feed the sow,

The ladies loved his courtly bow;

        The Black Brigand!

He shot the sheriff through the head

And whipped the posse till they bled:

The word went out: Alive or Dead! 

        The Black Brigand!

He rode off hard into the west,

His medals gleaming on his chest,

Determined to resist arrest:

        The Black Brigand!

 

Blow the bugle, draw the sword,

He galloped off without a word,

And ne’er did yield but to the Lord!

        The Black Brigand!

No man followed where he did go;

All this was eighty years ago—

I’m ninety-five so I should know.

        The Black Brigand!

Men swear that when the moon is high,

They look up in the western sky,

And see The Brigand riding by:

        The Black Brigand!

And I, who chased him all my life,

I see him too—so does my wife,

And so do our twins, Mansoor and Fyfe:

        The Black Brigand!

When misty Goat comes up the stair

And points a hoof at sky-drawn Bear,

Oh mercy, Lord, I see him there!

They sing and dance, they are a pair,

The Brigand and the dancing bear!

The Brigand and the dancing bear!

        The Black Brigand!

007: Pensioned To Kill

Roger Moore was sixty-eight when he first played 007 

And he persisted in the part until he was nigh

On eighty. Critics rate him the worst Bond ever

And filmgoers were appalled by his decrepitude, even in Live & Let Die.

When Toshiko’s parents died in a plane crash in 1983,

Donald took to her to see Octopussy—she was forlorn,

And he wanted to cheer her up. But she said Roger Moore

Was like a very much older and not funny Kenneth Horne.

Stewart Granger was Roger Moore’s boyhood hero. His dream came true

When, in 1945, he was an extra on Caesar & Cleopatra. The leading parts

Were played by Claude Rains and Vivien Leigh. Stewart Granger

Played Apollodorus, a patrician amateur of the arts.

His dream came true again in 1978—they were both in The Wild Geese.

Stewart Granger played Sir Edward Matherson. Richard Harris

Was in it too. He’d have been a much better 007 than Roger Moore

Even though he couldn’t act, was always drunk and lived in Paris.

Roger Moore has been married four times. His first wife, skater

Doorn van Steyn, threw a teapot at him. His second, Dorothy Squires, threw

Things at him for fifteen years. He took it out on his third, Luisa Mattioli.

But in 2003 he married Stewart Granger—and another dream came true.

The Problem With Q

Le Chiffre. The clue is in the name. Cipher.

An unsafe pair of hands. A man who designs

Chairs you wouldn’t want to sit on.        

A little warped around the gills, perhaps,

But he had Personality.

Oddjob, being merely a metaphor

For how velocity copes under pressure

In aeroplanes, lacks the capacity to engage

On a human level, whereas nowadays,

In our multicultural, cosmopolitan virtuality,

No one who has ever eaten widely           

Would take on so and sneer at Donovan Grant

For choosing red wine with the fish.

But Q,

Brilliant scientist, who could have been a contender

For several Nobel prizes, never designs anything but

Toys for Bond. Did he have no other life,

No wife, no favourite restaurant,

No hobbies or children who look the spitting image

Of Mrs Q? 

                    Consider a Sunday,

And Bond is in the Bahamas, joking

With Felix Leiter about his hook.

The lawn is immaculate and Mrs Q

Dangles one leg over her hammock,

Cooing: “What’s keeping you, big boy?”

Q himself, full to bursting after a long lunch,

Belches in his steel deckchair, searching for

The Eject button; and then remembers:

Here’s home. I can get up and walk.

No devices needed. And I’m as horny as hell

Knowing what Mrs Q isn’t wearing underneath her skirt.

The little Qs are playing by the mulberry tree,

Their minds a million miles away from

Exploding cigarette cases and hollowed-out

Cuban heels. Giggling

With salacious forethought, Q grabs his wife’s hand

And propels her to the small pagoda

At the bottom of the garden which they have built

Specially for such occasions.

They want no more children so he fishes out

A rubber johnny from his box of tricks

And they up the conjugal ante.

She is his Aston Martin, and he drives

Like the devil. 

                          Later,

All breath exhaled and basking in the afterglow

Of ruddiness, he moves to repeat

The performance. She reluctantly protests:

“But that was our last johnny.”

Q smiles.

“This one’s reversible,” he says.

James Bond in Westcliff-on-Sea

He knew the sound:
a high explosive squash-head round,
fired from a recalibrated PKP 
Pecheneg 11.5 (SRB),
passing through an inch
and a half of pure titanium plate
(the moon’s eclipse reprieves the farrier).
It was the sort 
of sharp report 
a peregrine falcon would make,
passing through the sound barrier
with a clean break as it fell
all of a summer’s day
towards its perfectly intended, unseen prey,
infinitely underground:
straight to hell.
He didn’t flinch.

No flicker of the eye betrayed his waking;
his ears stood to attention, almost shaking
in the shocked air. Two bluebottles patrolled
the ambit of the low-
hanging lamp above his head, 
its yellowing glass mantle festooned
with remembrances of last days
spent in its consoling shed 
(in the dark beyond its cone 
of influence over the green baize, 
Vesper Lynd, who has no human fears,
watches, waits and disappears)— 
And then they were gone; the flies had flown.
His eyes snapped open; the flat sea shone.
He was marooned.

“Coo, you didn’t half jump, Mr. Bond!
It was just a car backfiring. Now you’re awake, l’ll
do your hair.” An unknown face, a badge that said ‘Jenny:
Your Carer’ (a word he loathed)—another change of staff;
this middle-aged trollop with her overfamiliar laugh
was the latest and least welcome of many.
His pale gaze sailed down beyond
the trees, landed softly on Westcliff Parade,
waited at the pedestrian crossing for a while,
then on through the Gardens to the Western Esplanade,
where on this perfect August day
The Westcliff-on-Sea Classic Car Competition was in full                             sway.
The blue Standard 8 which had just backfired
backfired again. “That bag’s about to burst.
It’s almost time for your lunch, but first 
let’s empty this bag, Mr. Bond.” His tired
eyes ached behind his Persol 6217s
as he watched the old cars go by. “Heavens,
you don’t half pee a lot, Mr. Bond!”
And then he saw it, five cars back from the Standard:
a silver Aston Martin DB III— 
a man in a steamer jacket at the wheel, a triple gold-banded
Morland at his lips: “Oh my God, that’s me!”
And at his side a smile, a mop of dirty blond:
he whispered, “Pussy, my love!”
She seemed to hear and squinted towards the terrace high                              above
the esplanade. He raised his hand and she was gone. 

“Something light for your lunch—an omelette,
Mr. Bond... ?” The word was like a gimlet
in his ear, a trespass on his soul.
It was like offering to sing My Way to Sinatra
or to run a nice warm bath for Cleopatra—
perhaps she thought such vile transgression droll.
He fished his fully-loaded Beretta
from the pocket of his dressing-gown
(a man with a license to kill doesn’t let a
saucy bint like this go ungunned-down)
and shot her in the head. 
“Your aim’s
as true as ever, James,”
she said,
falling stricken at his slippered feet.
“I wanted to get you something nice to eat.
I know exactly how to do your eggs—that’s why I risked
everything to come to Westcliff-on-Sea.”
Her life was ebbing fast, her blood flowed dark and free.
“So tell me about eggs—and nothing funny, Jenny.”
And she said, “Beaten, not whisked,”
and died. And he said, “Moneypenny!”

Hoskins Considers His Options

The Structure Of Scientific Revolutions

By Thomas Kuhn was very well received

By those for whom reality is just

A paradigm by which it is perceived.

This nonsense predates science and belongs

More properly to Plato than to rigour

For there is nothing either true or false

But thinking makes it so; and thus the bigger

The lie the more it will be seen as true,

Relatively speaking, in the round:

The premises prescribe, and fancy follows;

Thanks to the mind, what’s lost is always found.

Or so I thought, aboard the morning train

From Waterloo to Fleet, via Farnborough (Main).

-- . . - the R.C.M.P.

The Mounties are a hardy breed,

They solve their crimes on horseback,

And every morn, as they go out,

Each man picks up his Morse-pack.

For them a dot is always dit

And every dash a dah,  

So dah-dit-dah-dit dit-dah dah-dit dit-dah dah-dit-dit dah-dit

Is Morse for Canada!

Because they’re wise and ne’er forget

How complicated Morse is,

The e’er resourceful mounted police

- . .- -.-. .... / .. - / - --- their horses!

Men and horses .-. . -.-. . .. ...- . / - .... .- -. -.- ...

From women .- .-.. .-.. / --- ...- . .-. / -.-. .- -. .- -.. .-!

- .... . / -- --- ..- -. - .. . ... / ... .- -.--, “A pleasure, ma’am,”

Their horses say, “Dah-dit-dit dit / dah-dit dit-da da-dit-dit                          dit-dah!”

So .... . .-. . .----. ... / - --- / - .... . / --- .-.. -.. / .-. -.-. -- .--.,

- .... . / .--. --- .-.. .. -.-. . -- . -. and their mounts!

Out in all weathers .- - / -.-. .-. .- -.-. -.- / --- ..-. / -.. .- .-- -.

Cause . ...- . .-. -.-- / ... . -.-. --- -. -.. / -.-. --- ..- -. - ...!

They put the -.-. .- -. in -.-. .- -. .- -.. .-,

They put the ...- in ...- .- -.,

And when these lads . -. ..-. --- .-. -.-. . / - .... . / .-.. .- .--,

They always dah-dah-dit dit dah / dah dit-dit-dit-dit dit dit-dit                     dit-dah-dit / dah-dah dit-dah dah-dit!

His Trousers Stayed Clean

Admiral Thomas Cochrane

Was known as le loup de mer—

A name the French awarded him;

You could say it was his nom de guerre.

You could say he was the greatest captain

A frigate ever had

But such a bold assertion

Might be thought a tad

Unseemly, given the other

Admirals I could mention:

Shovell, Byng and Norris,

Who are surely in contention.

But none, ’tis said, did more

To further the British cause

Than Cochrane, the victor of

The Napoleonic wars.

He had a way with the matelots,

Addressed them in their lingo

And then he sank their ruddy ships

Without remorse, by Jingo!

He always chose the dangerous course,

His motto was “I’ll risk it!”

And of all his daring exploits

This one takes the biscuit:

He disguised himself as Bonaparte

And boldly stepped aboard

La Méduse, as the sparkling sun

Shone brightly on his sword

And, addressing the ship’s company,

With a confident cri-de-coeur,

He gave the order to set sail,

To wit: “À l’eau, c’est l’heure!”