James Bond - Shaken and Stirred (Part 3/3)

In the final part of his series for Inside Time (the National Newspaper for Prisoners), Matthew Williams' super-hero James Bond, having survived the rigours of Belmarsh and Full Sutton, now samples the delights of Wakefield and Long Lartin before ending his illustrious career in a manner he could never have dreamed possible!

Wakefield prison's segregation unit 'cages' would not, Bond mused, have been his first choice of winter residence! Glumly, he recalled the Ice Palace of old wotsisname, that megalomaniac who lived in Scandinavia, where he'd had a right old thrashabout in a Mercedes armed with small-calibre mortars. At least that lair had been built with a bit of panache - this pile of old bricks was just ... well, banal.

Forced to pace his cell to keep warm, Bond ruminated on the Full Sutton psychologist's damning report, which had so ruthlessly criticised him. The daft little bitch responsible for writing it would still have been in pigtails when he'd been caning despots all over Christendom ... and he was the one with the personality disorder? And as for 'victim empathy' and 'alcohol awareness' - why, the cheeky bloody madam! Bond's rakish chauvinism was slowly turning into a vicious hatred of women, which was as unfortunate as it was predictable.

For two weeks he stewed, then came a surprise, a solicitor's visit. Suspicious, he crept into the confidential legal room, wondering if the Home Secretary had finally decided to do the decent thing and had come to rectify matters. About bloody time too!

Bond raised his left eyebrow when an old dear marched in and the guard shut the door. He gave her the once over. Broad shoulders, big knockers, white hair and as ugly as sin.

"I don't remember asking for any solicitor", said Bond in as surly a manner as he could muster.

"For heaven's sake Commander, don't try my patience. Now pay attention!"

"Q! By God, it's really you!"

The aged quartermaster grinned: "I've been trying to reach you for months. This is the only way I can see you without being overheard. Dashed sorry about the watch old boy, but I'm here to make things up to you. I'm freelance now by the way, and 'M' has washed his hands of us both".

Q took out his purse, stuffed to the brim with gadgets. "Here, stick this lipstick in your ear, it's a short-wave radio. And this atomiser contains enough acid to dissolve half the prison. Now this hat pin ... "

He didn't get any further. The door flew open and the screws rushed in, mob handed. Neither Bond nor Q had noticed the camera in the corner, silly sods! Q put up a good fight, spraying the room with twin jets of tear gas from his false tits, while Bond set upon the senior visits officer, breaking his jaw. He suddenly realised he'd turned into a thug.

Bond duly got thirty days loss of remission, and Q got a two hundred quid fine six months later at Harrogate magistrates. He was lucky.

Bond's last hope of escape gone, he knuckled down to the rest of his sentence, ending up as a wing cleaner in Long Lartin in Worcestershire. Ironically, it was a stone's throw from where he'd foiled a plot to seed the water table with plutonium. He couldn't even remember which villain was behind it now. Scaramanga? The Mekon? Or was it just some nutty science student with a grudge against the local water board? He didn't care any more.

After four long years, Bond was released and given back his exploding shoelaces, sleeping gas cologne etc (nobody having clocked on to what they were). He got a job hoeing flowerbeds on a sheltered accommodation estate working for his 'uncle', Q. He'd set up a landscape garden agency called 'Q Gardens', which he thought tremendously witty.

Bond didn't let the grass grow under his feet though - if you'll pardon the expression. He planned to write his memoirs and expose the Ministry for the total bastards they were. The final indignity came, however, when he saw that 'M' had beaten him to it, with his own account of 'life on the inside' of the Secret Services serialised in the Telegraph. Bond seethed, but knew there was nothing he could do about it. After all, who in their right mind would believe an ex-prisoner with a drink problem and a diagnosed personality disorder?

* Matthew Williams is currently resident in HMP Dovegate

© 2006 Matthew Williams / Inside Time

Read Part 1

Read Part 2