I recall this incident when I was ten or eleven, I was watching a Roger Moore flick where he is chased by the bad guys, skiing his way through to the submarine that looked like an iceberg. The lid of the submarine popped and Mr Bond vanished inside the iceberg while the bad guys kept looking for him only to lose sight of him.
Just like any other bond classic, there came a Bond Girl. In this scene, the girl got two glasses and a champaign, a quick toast and just when lips started approaching each other and heads tilted to accommodate a perfect angle to go for it…
Ding! I covered my face using the blanket, oh my eyes more importantly to not see something that was inappropriate for my age perhaps. That was the unspoken understanding between one and a half men. Dad and I.
I would sit there with all my ears open, heart yearning to understand what was going on, while the deal was, I would cover my face with the blanket, till the Kiss-hungry hero of the movie would be done learning a new tongue – cheesy.
The kiss was done, and my dad would say “hmm”. Which was my cue, that it was all over. It was time to uncover my drape and get back to watching what Bond did, everything else apart from the Kiss of course. Thank you appa for allowing me.
What a big Bond fan I have been, even my Royal Enfield in my twenties had a number plate – ah, there’s no prizes for guessing the number – 007 indeed.
Here’s a scene where..
Bond is learning Danish from Professor Inga in “The World is not enough” where he answers a call from Moneypenny and tells M, his boss mentioning that he’s at oxford brushing up a little bit of Danish. Inga, overhearing Bond questions.. “Little?”.
Bond signals her to keep mum “shuush”, while M on the other end of the telephone responds with another bond special – smart lines “Am afraid, you’re going to have to kiss off your lesson james.”
“Ahan, I’ll be there in a… in an hour” – replies duty-bound, loyal servant of the Queen, Mr Bond.
And he has to abruptly end making love with the beautiful professor having to report back at the office. As Moneypenny hangs up she calls James a “cunning linguist”.
She then looks at M and says “don’t ask”. M responds “don’t tell”. Finally, James while getting out of bed, wearing his customary white shirt, remarks, “I have always enjoyed studying a new tongue”. Chessy. underscore. But hey that’s one of the Bond specialities we love. Don’t we?
So for people who trigger the Bond connection and a conversation with me, has to bear with my unusually large repository of Bond lines and trivia. For example, we named a Polar Bear in Svalbard Ursula – when we saw the lovely female bear walk out of the water to the iceberg, couldn’t help but remind ourselves of the Bikini Bond Girl Ursula Anders in the first-ever bond flick Dr. No. It was a big yes from all my favourite clients on the trip – Ursula is what we called her finally.
So guys did you know where the name James Bond came from? How did Ian Fleming name this character Bond, James Bond?
Ian fleming, the creator of the James Bond series, A British author, journalist and naval intelligence officer was also an avid Bird Watcher. Fleming had a copy of The Birds of West Indies, a field guide to the caribbean bird waters which was authored by the American origin Ornithologist named – guess what? James Bond.
A few years later, Ian Fleming, told the Ornitholist’s wife
“that this brief, unromantic, Anglo-Saxon and yet very masculine name was just what I needed, and so a second James Bond was born”.
Wherever possible Ian fleming shows traces of his bird watching interest in the books that he wrote. For example, Who can forget the recreation of the Ursual Anders scene in Pierce Brosnan’s final outing as Bond, Die Another Day where “Halle Berry” walking out of the beach in a similar Bikini, where Bond’s watchful eyes spot her through a Binoculars, unable to focus on the distant island on which he was supposed to take a look, starts admiring Jinx, who cat walks up to her towel and James triggers his conversation “Magnificent view”, leaving viewers guessing if he meant the distant island and the beach scenery or Jinx. Well if you know Bond, you should know he couldn’t have meant the island entirely.
Well, I can’t wait for the final outing of Daniel Craig thriller “No time to Die” which is planned to be released in April next year. Well COVID has not just messed up business, it’s also told us this isn’t the time to die, this is the time to introspect, and change. It’s time to plan for the better tomorrow. As we say “Tomorrow Never Dies”.