James Bond?

Photograph Quiz:

Photo no. 33:- What is special about this t-shirt and why does it have a resonance this month?

Dear Blog,

On Saturday, as soon as I had finished telling you about the Screws of the World being dethreaded* by their inappropriate use of that photograph of me racing the steeplechase, I went out for an 11 mile trudge from my estate over towards Packington Park, the home of Lord Aylesford, across to the Priory at Maxstoke, up to Shustoke near the Daw Mill Colliery and back via Corley Moor. Stripped out, I was pleased to have avoided the occasional rain showers we have been having of late. I was somewhat surprised when I arrived back home to find a large stretched black limousine with smoky glass windows parked outside the double gates. Clearly, the security locking system had kept him from entering my grounds. I panicked at first as I suspected it was the TV Licensing Authority calling to check up on my interactive black and white portable tv set. For a moment I suspected that you had blagged on me Blog. But no, I apologise. A gentleman in a dark suit wearing dark shades climbed out of the front seat of the car and introduced himself as Jimmy Bond or James Blond or something similar. Said he had an important issue to talk about. He showed me his business card which said he was from MI5 or something. What the Mechanics Institute had to do with me, I failed to see. But he was insistent, so I invited him in. So what did The Man in Black want???

He said he wished to see Mrs. Kirkham and I said that she was out but I was her husband and was there anything I could do to help. He seemed a little taken ablack behind his shades. He said he was surprised to meet me as he thought I was dead and I said no I always look like this after a hard trudge and he said that he had heard my interview on the local wireless station in February about my trudge around the streets of London and it had made his day as he was interested in children’s charities and my two charities Tiny Tims Children’s Centre and Newlife in particular but had not seen no result for me after the London Marathon race and when he had asked a friend about how I had got on and what the result of the race was he had been told that I had died at 18 miles and he had felt so unhappy about that as I had been such a nice person but he had not seen any obituary in the local newspaper which he thought was strange and as he was passing this way anyway he thought he would just pop in to see what Mrs Kirkham had done with the body as he thought he might get a bit of business because he was an Undertaker by profession, a Funeral Director, and I told him that I had not died at 18 miles after all and that I was still trudging around and that the term ‘dieing’ was a technical term used by trudgers when trudgers started to trundle and that I was OK and that a few minutes ago when I came back from my trudge he had shown me his business card and it had said that he worked for MI5 and I did not understand what he had to do with the security services and how was I involved anyway and he said that MI stood for the name of the Funeral Directors he worked for and the MI  was the initials of his company, Mortuaries Incorporated, the ‘5’ being the branch number for the Coventry depot and I said I thought it stood for MI5 and he was a secret agent and he said he might not be a secret agent but he still had a few dead drops which I thought lacked taste but we both had a laugh together and he said that he was sorry for the misunderstanding and that he hoped that I was not too upset and that he hoped that he might do business with me in future and I said over my dead body and we both had another laugh together.

                                         Colin

Ref: * Don’t you dare tell anyone about this Blog. It’s confidential between you and me. If it gets out, Radio 4** will be using it the same as last time!!

Ref: ** Of course it is not the first time I was broadcast to the nation on Radio 4. When it was called the Home Service in 1956, I made my small contribution to ‘Any Answers’. The day following the broadcast, my Latin teacher, who later became High Master at Manchester Grammar School, I believe, began the lesson by declining ‘Well done Kirkham. Good letter that. Amo, amas ...... ‘ I don’t think he praised me again during my school career, but he did reward me quite often by throwing pieces of chalk at me and allowing me to keep them so that I could play hopscotch at break in the school yard with the other boys. You don’t see generosity like that nowadays in your comprehensives, do you Blog?