Bond

Sometimes you just feel you need a holiday. It's been a long time since the sweltering days of summer. It's even longer till next summer. And somehow I have accumulated four weeks of holiday at work, which have to be taken before next April. Next April sounds a long way off, but it can be hard to drum up the enthusiasm for a fortnight's holiday in a cold and bleak February, particularly when you can't afford to go anywhere not cold and not bleak. So I will begin by taking tomorrow off. It is Friday, after all. I could take off every Friday for the next five months, now that I come to think of it. Or perhaps just take off the whole of  December. That way I might just about get the Christmas shopping done on time.

I got round to seeing the latest James Bond last weekend. At the cinema, I mean. It's quite an achievement for me to make it to the cinema: my social life is generally so brimming with activity that I miss the few films that I want to see. But there are always some for which I make the effort to rearrange my hectic schedule. (Which usually just means doing a larger supermarket shop the day before.) Clearly, I can identify, to some extent, with the character of James Bond: moody, mysterious, living life on a knife edge. That's me, to a tee. Maybe not so much the knife edge, perhaps: I probably veer towards a more placid lifestyle, to tell the truth. And I'm not really one for fast cars; especially not with ejector seats. They are an accident waiting to happen.