I had been going through yet another one of those phases of “getting into” OHMSS and adding scarce items to my collection and forlornly daring to imagine myself on a skiing holiday with Carole, when suddenly the idea came to me. I could treat Nick and I to a winter-sports holiday and combine it with a visit to a Bond location that I have always longed to visit; Blofeld’s alpine retreat in the Bernese Oberland! Nick when he was much younger had been a keen skate boarder so I thought it only fair, as this was really his treat, to first offer him the option of snow-boarding. This however would probably have meant us not being together a lot so I was delighted when he decided he wanted to learn to ski instead.

So it was on Saturday the 7th January 2006 that Nick and I took off from Gatwick airport at 2.55 in the afternoon on flight BE9203 bound for Switzerland.

As we climbed above the clouds to cruise at 30,000 feet I listened to John Barry’s wonderfully scored soundtrack for OHMSS on a Sony Walkman purchased in the shopping area of the departure lounge just prior to boarding the aircraft. After the usual duty-free trolley had been brought round followed by a light snack with either ‘tea or coffee?’ from one of the air hostesses it was not long before we began to make the descent into the gathering dusk with the mountains surrounding Berne just discernable….‘fasten your lap-straps’ in three languages, and they were planning down, a slight bump, the roar of jet deflection, and then they were taxiing up to the apron in front of the imposing, very European-looking buildings decked with the gay flags of the nations.

CONTINUED