Bond's Work and Lifestyle at MI6
sirso
Posts: 211MI6 Agent
Just saw this in Moonraker, which I just started reading.:
"It was the beginning of a typical routine day for Bond. It was only two or three times a year that an assignment came along requiring his particular abilities. For the rest of the year he had the duties of an easy-going senior civil servant—elastic office hours from around ten to six; lunch, generally in the canteen; evenings spent playing cards in the company of a few close friends, or at Crockford’s; or making love, with rather cold passion, to one of three similarly disposed married women; week-ends playing golf for high stakes at one of the clubs near London.
He took no holidays, but was generally given a fortnight’s leave at the end of each assignment—in addition to any sick-leave that might be necessary. He earned £1500 a year, the salary of a Principal Officer in the Civil Service, and he had a thousand a year free of tax of his own. When he was on a job he could spend as much as he liked, so for the other months of the year he could live very well on his £2000 a year net."
Comments
yep, that s where we learn most of what we know about Bond's day to day life and what his job is when he's not out saving the world. also the first estimate of his age and how long he has ahead of him in this position.
There's also a couple of good chapters in the middle of From Russia with Love, where he hasn't had a mission in a whole year and he makes himself a complete nuisance around the office. I believe Goldfinger and maybe Thunderball also have scenes of him in the office. You Only Live Twice as well, but that's unique because of his mental state.
could we imagine any of the cinematic Bonds doing office work most of the year? maybe MooreBond because he has time to read all these reports nobody else bothers with, but I cant imagine a scene of him actually doing that, he must memorise them by osmosis.
______________
EDIT: btw @sirso I remember you saying youd only read a couple of the books. Congrats on delving in deeper! You must share your thoughts as you work your way through the Fleming canon, I think we all appreciate being reminded what Fleming really wrote. The opening chapters of Moonraker do indeed flesh out his world, which hadnt really been glimpsed in the first two novels.
@caractacus potts Have a look at "Happy Anniversary 007", about 15 minutes in, for Moore as Bond doing some studying. That may be the scene you're looking for.
(25) Happy Anniversary 007 1987 - YouTube
thanks @Barbel , I never even knew about that documentary
includes a montage of MooreBondSplaining moments. If MooreBond had been in my class at high school we all would have hated him. Despite the attempt to include some ConneryBond scenes in that montage, the only subject he's expert at is wines. I bet ConneryBond skipped all his classes and got into mischief, he woulda been one of the Cool Kids.
Thanks. I've downloaded some ebook versions of the books from this site:
They are free.
Heh! That's wonderful, I've always loved how low budget all of those Bondish introduction bits looked! It's always made me think that if push had come to shove and Dalton had dropped out as well as Brosnan, Roger could have done TLD...
Quite worrying to see how low picture quality the actual clips from the films look there, even just compared with the Roger talky bits (I know it's all gone down a generation on VHS). We're lucky to have such lovely shiny versions of them now!
I like how these stretches inbetween missions were characterized in FRWL as “the blubbery arms of the soft life” by Bond, lol. Bond sifting through secret papers for the first couple of hours at the office, I’m sure is relatable to some. For the Seinfeld fans it reminds me of George Costanza, not having a clue about proper office work, gets a large accordion file holder and “arranges” in it the pile of paperwork on his desk. From my own personal experience, when going through voluminous, inconsequential material at work, pick up on just enough buzz-words to casually drop when in the presence of your evil supervisor, like, “Operation Grandslam.”
youre not Penske material!
Of course...
That
That’s the one!