This post is dedicated to Sirs Isaac Newton and Bobby Charlton (They don’t make them like they used to).

Figure 1. Sir Bobby Charlton, “A Football Man”.

Bond had just graduated from Oxford with a massive degree, inferior in magnitude only to his perception of it. The careers office recommended the civil service but little did they know that he was not going to be civil, and even less servile was he going to be.

MI6 it was then.

One evening, while Bond was composing bizarre introductions and engineering contrary opinions regarding the correct serving of cocktails, he got his (phone) call to arms. M told him by text to go to Darlington and get the train timetable off of some guy working for Great North Eastern as a test.

Those of a nervous disposition should look away now. Even the most hardened reader, used to the frank, honest, and often uncompromising style of this weblog, may find the graphic homosexual pornography that follows too much to bear, and… hardened might also refer to the state of male genitalia during sexual arousal. I must also apologise for breaking one of my own rules of sex scene writing that one should always include a pathetic fallacy but never a pathetic phallus.

It drizzled. The antiquated Bond was obviously a huge homophobe but his first assignment was to get the train times from this fat controller by any means necessary. He was going to have to be a gay Lord.

Against my better judgement I am still amused by the phrase gay Lord.

Bond lay still, ruined. He pondered the etymology of the word gay and wondered where it might go next. A desperate mixture of blood and semen dribbled from his anus to the bed, beating a primal rhythm, syncopated with the pitter-patter of rain on the window of this northern motel. This seemed to suggest that gay might describe a new school of linguistics? A homophobic teenage boy? (e.g. look at those gays studying Nuts magazine and learning misogyny) An ecstatic metaphorical explosion?

The next joke is set in the year 2000.

Bond hated political correctness and whenever it was mentioned would say “I believe one is incorrect to take the correct approach to anything. 1+1=2! That is mathematical correctness gone mad!” in his usual nonsensical idiomatic style. He did not play by any rules, and certainly not the rules of formal logic. He was extremely proud of this personal brand of cod philosophy and, now, it led him to a choice. Should he remain a low level spy in the hope of future promotion to heterosexual humiliation in more expensive hotel rooms, or should he stop being such a Top Gear type, car fan, and arse?

Right there, right now, he decided to change his life and become a professor of language, right where our story began…

Figure 2. Professor James Bond, professor of syntax and philology at the University of Oxford.

It shows how personal decisions can impact real lives. Real people. Real lives.

Thanks in advance,