The Great Wine Conspiracy

In recent weeks I have made a few purchases on Amazon using portions of the £50 I have been donated every week by Her Majesty's government in return for being a bum. Nothing extravagant, just T-shirts and such like. Vouchers from two different wine companies offering me 50% plus off a crate of their wine. Incidentally, or coincidentally, or perhaps no great coincidence at all, On Monday I start work at the Stevenage-based nationally renowned cooperative known only as The Wine Society. What if there's more to this sudden influx of winery, vino and generosity? What if there's a network, a grapevine on which the powers that be have begun an offensive?

I say this not only as a fan of spies and having the eternal little boy inside my head who wants to be Bond, but I set to wondering after a few friends over the last few years have joked around that I'm some sort of international man of mystery. Secretive is not something I'd describe myself as, but apparently I am. These observations weren't helped by my "expressing an interest" in MI5 near the end of our last year of university, oh so many moons ago (a few months). So maybe my writer's imagination and this skew towards secretive industries is fuelling this little whimsy that is being typed out here.

Any suspicion hope of The Wine Society being this way comes fresh from the business newswire situated in Fleet Street which, it occurred to me almost a week into the time I gave over to the slavery I was delivered unto, was perfectly placed to be a cover for some sort of suspicious goings on. Nothing illegal, but perhaps hyper-legal, eyes only stuff. I mean, the company had a bland generic name, like Universal Exports or Transworld Consortium, containing the word solutions, for crying out loud. If there were ever an office I'd been in that could have been involved in surveillance and hits paid for by the government, this was it. Minutes away from Whitehall and the corridors (subterranean corridors, with automatic doors and retina scanners, for all we know) of power, running a website looking at oil, gas, mining, banking and other industry sectors, this seemed a perfect cover. But then maybe I'm reading too much into it.

Back to wine. What if Stevenage's own hub of industry, Gunnels Wood Road, had such cover offices on? It's been host to BAE (British Aerospace) in the past, where I'm told weaponry programming and other military activity took place. It still has an EADS site (just behind the cinema complex, actually, so make of that what you will) which, among other things, was pivotal in the manufacture of the Mars Beagle. You know, the one that was "lost" right after it landed on the Red Planet. Why wouldn't such a site need nearby covert intelligence? Perhaps they think that I've already become a member of their enlightened halls and these vouchers being delivered in Amazonian packages are secret codes, orders, or conditioning through subliminal patterns ingrained on the paper? Who knows?

None of this is allegation or even remotely indicated by what you would call evidence, just a crazy "what if-?" notion. It might find its way into a book one day, if the mood holds me. I'm not raving, seeing conspiracy everywhere, I just think it's interesting that life throws up things like these coincidences can be tied to, weaving a wire framework of fact that people like me (and, y'know, Dan Brown) can then paper mache over with narrative, tying it all together into fictional but plausible ideas, if a little imagination is applied and it's all viewed through squinting eyes and a slightly tilted head.

That's why I write, after all. To be part of something bigger than whatever things I'm part of in real life, just through the people I try to make real on the page. Who doesn't want to be part of something exciting like that? Wouldn't it be cool if something like this was going on along that bleak dual carriage-way?

I'm reading too much into it. Just know this- if you're expecting a present from me this Christmas, it will likely be a bottle of wine.