Caroline Munro

I got the Spring Newsletter from my favourite Bond Girl, the glamourous Caroline Munro yesterday.

I see there's to be a reunion of the cast of the Hammer film Captain Kronos Vampire Killer at the Lumiere Theatre in London on 29 March. Caroline says it's 35 years since she last saw her co-star, Horst Janson.

Other shows and appearances listed are:

15-16 March, Courts Chicago Collectors Show, Chicago, US
10-11 May, Movie and Comic Event, Bottrop, Germany
18-20 July, Western Film Fair, Charlotte, US

Caroline is still struggling to get an update of her website after the tragic death last year of Steve Goss who managed it on her behalf.

Spudmatic!

Talking of toys, there was a mention in the magazine about spud guns.

I used to have one of these Spudmatic guns. It was a cap gun - you could cock the hammer and it would happily bang caps and you could use it as a water pistol by placing the red cap over the barrel. This, sadly, never seemed to work very well on my example but it didn't matter too much because the whole point of a spud gun is to fire little chunks of potato at your mates, family, or whatever!

You jammed the gun barrel first into a potato and then snapped off sideways so that the barrel became plugged with a chunk of potato. Pulling the trigger pulled the front part of the barrel backwards, building up air pressure inside until the piece of potato shot out.

Wonderful! Sticking ears and eyes and noses on potatoes was for wimps! I made a shoulder holster for my Spudmatic out of a leather comb case and some strips of polythene cut from a carrier bag. It went to school with me, under my blazer and woe betide playground bullies who tried it on with me. PING! A little potato pellet would get them right between the eyes!

"Who are you?" girls would say admiringly.
"Burke..." I'd say, in my best Sean Connery accent, "John Burke..."
"Why do you keep a shrivelled potato in your pocket?"

Girls... They just don't enter into the spirit of the thing do they?

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It's Been That Sort of Day...

And this is before I opened it...

I started the day full of good intentions to strip the remaining wood board panelling from the entrance hall, the stairs and the landing.

Once I gathered all the tools, I realised that the battens that the panelling is fastened to go all the way up to the ceiling, which is a bloody long way up above the bottom of the stairs. My stepladders don't do stairs...

I could tear and twist at the bottom I thought, but then the battens are only 1/2 inch square and would probably break off leaving a bit at the top. In any case there would be huge holes ripped out of the plaster where the rawl plugs are fixed...

So I abandoned the idea and resigned myself to a day of fun...

"You can plaster the holes you left in the hallway then," Fran said logically. I hate logic. I hate D-I-Y too but I did have some plaster in the outhouse.

So I spent a couple of hours filling up holes, smoothing out cracks and knocking out a load of loose plaster in the ceiling corner near the door. I actually managed to replaster that too. I was quite impressed with myself...

Not quite sure how I'll deal with all the lumps and bumps yet but plenty of time for that next week or the week after.

So thought I'd open a bottle of wine to celebrate my success and felt drunk before any of it passed my lips...

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Lois Maxwell - the Miss Moneypenny. R.I.P.

Sunday in London

Well I got to London on time - Virgin Trains actually got in a little early although it was a long journey compared to the more usual weekday one! We went via Coventry and all round the houses it seemed.

Met up with Fran and Gill on Trafalgar Square where they were resting their feet and getting splashed by the spray from the fountain every time the wind blew their way. They didn't have a great deal of time with me as they have to get over to Stansted for their flight back. Why oh why are Ryanair stopping their Blackpool/Stansted flights? Doesn't seem to make sense, every time I've been on them they have been very nearly full and over the past few years I've used them quite a bit!

When you consider the cost of train fares if you have to book close to the date of travelling, being able to get a flight and then be in London by 10:00am was brilliant! Even considering the train to and from Stansted-Liverpool St station, it was still less than half the price of Virgin's fare.

We had a trundle up Regent Street and into the big HMV on Oxford Street where I was delighted to find at last a DVD of "Prehistoric Women", a Hammer film starring the lovely Martine Beswick as a queen of a tribe of women stumbled upon by Michael Latimer. I've met Martine several times over the last few years, she was a Miss Jamaica, a stunning beauty in the 1960s (and not at all hard on the eyes now!) who starred in several of Hammer's films and a couple of Bond films; "From Russia With Love" as a fighting gypsy girl and "Thunderball" as one of Bond's doomed helpers! Anyway, I've never watched this film before so I will enjoy that once I get home again!

A relaxing night in store I think - chance to finish my book, the 10th in Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series. And yes... I did bring No.11 with me!