Espionage

Well, here I am. Thousands of miles from London, in a country most people can't even spell. While I've been here, I've been chased through busy streets and shot at, and I have to tell you: it's hard work. Tomorrow should be a little calmer; I'll be undertaking some reconnaissance.

Where are my manners? You don't even know who I am, do you? Well, you see, that's where our problems are going to start - if I gave you that information, I'm afraid I'd have to kill you. You're going to have to refer to me simply as The Spy. Anything more than that might just blow my cover.

Who knows, you may end up with more information than that as time passes; it really is at the discretion of my superiors. But, of course, they can never know that I'm talking to anyone. So keep all of this to yourself, will you?

Now, you might think that one of Her Majesty's secret agents would earn shedloads of money. You'd be wrong. It's better than minimum wage, but it doesn't exactly allow for the sort of lifestyle that an MI6 operative might want. Let's put it this way: tomorrow, I'll be driving an Aston Martin DBS V12 to a dinner party being thrown by a very bad man. I'll be accompanied by a beautiful - and, unbelievably, single - operative whose name I cannot divulge. Once this operation is complete, however, and I'm back in London, things will be very different; swap the Aston Martin for a Ford Fiesta, the gorgeous operative for my flatulent flatmate, and the virtually unlimited expense account for my maxed out credit card, and I'm sure you can see why I love serving my country. At least they let me keep the Brioni suits.

All of which brings me to my point: I do my level best to save money when I can. And being in my line of work, you might say that I was pretty good at gathering intelligence - it is my job, after all. So when I get the sniff of a bargain, I investigate, and more often than not, it pays dividends. Being the thoughtful, caring individual that I