‘The scent and smoke and sweat of a casino are nauseating at three in the morning.  Then the soul-erosion produced by high gambling – a compost of greed and fear and nervous tension – becomes unbearable and the senses awake and revolt from it.’  No, this is not some retrospective 2050 newspaper piece, metaphorically summing up the impoverishing folly of the whole net zero escapade.  Rather, it is the famous first paragraph, of Casino Royale, the first James Bond novel by Ian Fleming, published in 1953. The book came out only fourteen months after Elizabeth II became Queen.  And the character Fleming created is one of the best-known cultural references of the post-second world war era. I can be infinitely more confident, when lecturing to my top-of-the-state University of Queensland law students, that they’ll catch a Bond reference, and maybe an allusion to the Beatles, than one to Shakespeare, Jane Austen or the King James Bible – and yes, please do take that as yet another indictment of the Australian education system.

At any rate, why do I mention Fleming and his creation James Bond? Because in late-January my wife and I will be travelling to Jamaica. More specifically, we’ll be heading to the northern part of the island to stay for the first time at an old-world resort called the Jamaica Inn. It’s located about a twenty-minute drive from Ian Fleming’s one-time Jamaica home, which he named ‘Goldeneye Villa’ and where he wrote all of his Bond novels. Founded in 1958, and still family owned and operated, this inn is intentionally old-school and deliberately intent on preserving a sort of 1950s vibe. There are no TVs in the rooms. My wife and I will have to dress for dinner. And the Jamaica Inn was often frequented by Ian Fleming’s good friend Noel Coward. And by Winston Churchill for that matter. By 1960s Hollywood types too.

So to get myself prepared I’m in the midst of reading Nicholas Shakespeare’s 2023 biography of Ian Fleming. And it’s already clear that Fleming was a far more complex and interesting man than the well-known stereotype of him pretends. To start, his intelligence work in the second world war was more important than anyone knew until recently. Fleming could never talk about it directly because of the Official Secrets Act, and probably because he wasn’t that sort of man. But I remember watching the movie Operation Mincemeat, which was loosely based on an actual British disinformation (in the true sense of the word here, not the eSafety Commissioner’s lefty, progressive, censorious sense) campaign to make the Nazis think the Allies would land in Greece, not Italy.

In the movie, one of the intelligence men who plays a pivotal role in saving tens of thousands of Allied soldiers’ lives by successfully orchestrating this bit of prestidigitation, had a Spitfire-flying brother who had died in the Battle of Britain. And their mum idolised the dead fighter pilot son while regularly belittling what she believes to be her Whitehall office administrator son. She thinks he should be doing something more to save the country. He is. But he can’t tell her, his own mum.  And by the way, we now know that Fleming played a big role in that real-life fantastical Operation Mincemeat mission.

That meant that Ian Fleming did his war-telling, obliquely, surreptitiously and with dollops of embellishment and gilding the lily, in the pages of his Bond novels. And, boy, did Fleming love Jamaica. At least two of the novels are set there, including the one that was made into the first movie, Dr No.  And showing his innate good sense, Fleming was a golfer and bridge player, two activities I learned young from my dad – who was excellent at both, if something of a psychotic, risk-taking bidder in the card game.  (The modern game of bridge has moved my dad’s way as conventional wisdom now is to bid big and occasionally lose rather than to play it safe with your bidding.) At any rate, come late-January I hope to play some golf in Jamaica. I hope to visit the homes of Noel Coward and Ian Fleming. I’m going to drink a drink I almost never drink in Australia or Canada or Britain, namely some excellent, dark rum. (If you’ve ever had top-of-the-line Jamaican rum you’ll know it’s like a totally different drink to what you get in a bar here.  The Jamaican locals drink the good stuff straight-up, or with a bit of ice.)

Meantime my wife is excited for this Christmas. It will be our first in Australia since 2012. And if you’re wondering, then yes, my wife and I did get out of this ScoMo prison island for Christmas overseas for both of the lockdown Covid years. And yes, I am still fuming inside at having had to pay the Queensland government thousands of dollars to be locked up and treated like crap for two weeks in hotel quarantine by the fearmongering, modelling-obsessed, data-ignorant thugs who plucked heavy-handed rules out of their rear ends. I bitterly regret agreeing to pay these government thugs thousands of dollars for the forcible confinement. Dumb. Dumb. Dumb.

But back to happier topics. Every year since 2012 my wife and I have spent Christmas either in Toronto (where my mum and my sister and her family live) or in London (where my son and daughter live). But eleven months ago my 88-year-old mum died, having won the lottery of life like many of us. (She knew more grammar than just about anyone, and would rage at the now common euphemism ‘passed’ for ‘died’ so it’s ‘died’.)  And after nearly a decade of living in Britain my daughter has returned to live and work in Sydney. So my son and his fiancée are coming here for the holidays. My daughter is coming up to Brisbane. And we’re having an Aussie Christmas. We can’t wait. Then on the 27th my wife and I are taking everyone to Tasmania for a few days and then up to Sydney for New Year’s Eve. My son’s fiancée is a terrific English girl and she wants to welcome in New Year’s Eve in front of the Sydney Opera House. We’ll be there. Come and say hello if you’re there too. (I’m the one who’ll remind you of Sean Connery. Do you buy that?)  And have a very happy Christmas all you wonderful readers who keep this fantastic publication going.

Oh, and in case you’re wondering, my favourite of the Fleming books is From Russia with Love. For the movies it’s a tie between that and Goldfinger.