Part Two: On Bond
Of course, this whole deed poll thing has the potential to go very wrong indeed, particularly when left in the hands of the general public. Or, to you and me, complete and utter raving maniacs.One of my many teenage dead-end jobs was working as a clerk at Her Majesty Margaret Thatcher's Dole Office in Reading, which left me, some decades later, still going under the name "Coleman the Doleman" to my few remaining friends that I haven't yet bludgeoned to death.
I was put in charge of those jobless people in the town whose surnames began with the letter B, and this resulted - quite literally - in an entire filing cabinet drawer of James Bonds, each and every one of them working deep, deep undercover, battling the evil of SPECTRE and SMERSH in the guise of a middle-aged bloke with greasy hair, a greasier anorak, milk-bottle glasses and rampaging body odour.
They all came in to sign on at Reading Dole Office with a pen that is also a standard issue Q Department laser gun, except the batteries have run out. However, if you turn it upside down, there's a little of Miss Moneypenny whose clothes fall off, which goes to show that even unemployable secret agents need their little pleasures.
What this throng of James Bonds - who all signed on at 9.40 am on a Tuesday - failed to realise was that a mere ten minutes earlier was when all the Ernst Stavro Blofelds came in for their giro cheques.
Happily, as a servant of the Crown, I nailed Blofeld's little plan to bring Britain to economic ruin, when I had him reported to our fraud department for working as a cat-sitter when he said he was out of a job. Then I copped off with sexy secret agent side-kick Felicity Bosoms, who signed on at ten to ten, shortly before M had me sacked in a fit of jealousy.
[Continued tomorrow]
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