The Courier & Advertiser (Fife Edition)
The sky won’t fall over these things
So Daniel Craig is sticking with us and giving us another outing as that increasingly stone-faced secret agent with the licence to kill. The sky has not fallen, the spectre at the feast has turned up live and kicking again and richer to the tune of around 120 million dollars or thereabouts.
He’d be daft not to, of course, given that particular pay packet. And give him his due, he seems nicely selfdeprecating about this monumental piece of casting (and type-casting) after reckoning (post his last cinematic outing as the debonair yet darkly disturbed hero) that he’d rather stick hot needles in his eyes than don the tight-fitting Tom Ford two-piece one last time.
In spite of my enjoyment of the Bond franchise since the days I went to the pictures with my mum and dad to see one of the later Sean Connery outings, I’m actually surprised that people care so much. And never mind Dr No; look at the parallel fuss over who’s (Dr) Who?
Who (if you will pardon the expression) has got the energy to worry about who’s playing the lead in a piece of popular fluff as long as they can act a bit and put over an entertaining story? This IS supposed to be entertainment, after all, not the answer to life.
Or maybe I’ve got that wrong. It’s strange how something seemingly trivial can have such a shattering effect on certain strata of public life while leaving others not even mildly stirred, let alone shaken.
Take that other epitome of cultural significance, Big Ben, currently shutting up shop for four years for a rebore and a de-coke and taking with it the spirit of a nation and the meaning of existence for a seemingly massive tranche of mid-Brexit Brits. I can’t say, not having been born within the sound of Bow bells or any other metropolitan ring-tone, that I give much of a hoot.
Call me a naïve, sentimental fool but a) I have never been that aware of the hallowed nature of these chimes except at New Year and b) I didn’t know they went out live and I can’t for the life of me, as someone who has a reasonably musical ear and can pick out a duff note at 40 paces, see why it matters if they do.
In these days of robotics, digital technology and wot not, surely a recording of the supposedly iconic sound would do until the originals are back in fighting fettle? Maybe it’s like crashing the pips between programmes on BBC radio – it is just not done and leaves the perpetrator open to slighting comment from those to whom these things are seemingly a matter of national life and death.
And while we’re on the subject, what’s with all the outrage about the repairs taking four years? Obviously, these people have never dealt with the difficulties of finding and pinning down (literally or metaphorically) any kind of competent tradesperson lately.
There’s been so much hand-wringing and breast-beating about this subject that I assumed it was a silly season wind-up, if I can put it like that. And don’t you believe in your heart of hearts, even if you are a rugged traditionalist with an eye for detail and an ear for timely perfection, that a lot of people at the heart of government surely must have more to worry about and better things to do? Like un-banning fox hunting, mayhap…
In the spirit of the recently cinematized version of Dunkirk, maybe somebody should make a film about it all. It could star a post-Bond Daniel Craig as the intrepid clock repairer, free-running up the side of the Elizabeth Tower clutching the spanner equivalent of a Walther PPK. I can hear it now. My name’s Bong. James Bong… Geriatrix Auld age, as we all know, disnae come itsel’. But there are some odd and telling little signs that point to a progression in time even without counting the wrinkles or the extra poundage or the complete inability to recognise any piece of music created this millennium.
Sitting in the reading room the other day (as one does, increasingly, with the passing years), I was pondering on the social implications of such matters as Glaswegian Mark Millar’s comic empire being bought over by Netflix. Having a butterfly mind, this seemed rather appropriate to me, as this viewing service has always sounded to me like a spin-off of that great cartoon creation, Asterix the Gaul. I’ve always thought there should be an age-related version, catering to older age groups. Geriatrix. I’d sign up for that.
Be that as it may, I realised with a thrill of horror that, these modern and contemporary musings aside, my bathroom reading was a definite giveaway as to my age and station. Almost literally, in fact. You know you’ve turned the corner in life when the Sunday colour supplements, the collected works of Garfield and the RSPB magazine play second fiddle to a well-thumbed copy of the north-east Fife bus timetable.
My name’s Bong. James Bong...