Was supposed to be up in London today to meet a friend and stay in town, but when I got to my railway station this morning, after battling to keep my baby Nissan on the road against the crosswinds, it was to find the station flooded, the track flooded and all trains sheltering in the sidings. So, I turned round and came home and am very glad I did. The trees are in a horizontal position outside my window and the rain coming down in stair rods, also horizontal, so I am quite glad to be here indoors nice and warm and cosy. I comfort myself with the thought that I am saving money as my meetings with this particular friend normally end up in the Waterstones at Piccadilly, spending money I have not got on books I should not be buying.
Instead I am having a quiet day reading, writing and blog hopping as I have lots of unexpected time to do so. Carl V had visited me and left a comment on The Ladies of Grace Adieu, and I paid a reciprocal visit and found that he has decided to re-read all the Ian Fleming James Bond novels, and this sparked off memories in my mind of the first one I ever read, Casino Royale.
You can see from this picture (and yes it was this edition I had) that it was a long time ago and definitely pre-decimal. I was 12 years old and found the whole book a bit shocking. I was young, I was innocent and I was at Convent School. Enough said I think. I was totally gripped by the story, fell in love with James Bond immediately, and found the sex scenes (which are probably positively pure if I read them again now) quite something. The scene where he was tortured was horrific and though I could not understand the card game at all (still can't) it reeked of nervous tension.
I was so gripped by this book that I smuggled it into school and sat and read it slap bang in front of our maths teacher, Mother Pauline, who would have exhibited a quite un-nun like response if she had noticed I had this paperback propped up behind a pile of text books. I was amazed that she did not notice my abstraction, but looking back, I daresay this far away look was one she was used to seeing on my face during maths lessons.
I read all of the Ian Fleming books after that and loved them all. I think I may have to join Carl and revisit them and see what I make of them now after some 45+ years. As far as I can recall they were very very good, but the original writing and characterisation has got lost in the James Bond movie 
franchise and perhaps we need to go back to the original source. This is certainly what has been done with the latest Bond film 'Casino Royale' and, though Daniel Craig does not fit Fleming's description of Bond, he brings real integrity to the part and makes it more hard hitting, and less comic book as it was with Roger Moore and, much though it pains me to say it as I love him, Pierce Brosnan.
In earlier Bond movies the action sequences were fun and you could laugh and cheer, in the latest they make you wince and duck and you genuinely do not know if Bond is going to survive. Well, you do really but he has to go through a hell of a lot more than he normally does. Genius ending. The viewer has been waiting for THAT line and wondering when it is going to come and in the final scene, as Bond has shot the villain who was responsible for the death of the woman he loved, and the dying man gasps 'Who are you?' there it is ' The name's Bond, James Bond' and we know that all he has suffered in this film has made him the 007 who will now carry on with his job.
I have seen this movie twice and I can assure you I went to see it the second time because I just thought it was so darned good. The thought that I might have a second look at Daniel Craig emerging from the sea in THOSE swimming trunks never crossed my mind.
Honest.
