My grandmother (on my dad’s side) was a unique and colourful woman. She was born in 1928 in Czechoslovakia, which is now the Czech Republic. She survived World War II as a teenager, became a war bride and moved to South Africa right after the war in 1946, had four children, a handful of husbands and lived the majority of her life in Zimbabwe. She was a very talented cook, painter, masseuse and wine maker who could knit and crochet the most beautiful things. But she also had her quirks…

For instance, my grandmother was once acquainted with a lady who had a mole on her chin. Of course, there is nothing remarkably noteworthy about having a mole on one’s face. However, this particular mole had a fairly long hair growing out of it, which used to bounce up and down as the lady talked. And I think this distracting hair must have teased my grandmother a little senseless, because one day she simply reached up and yanked that hair out without any warning. I guess she just couldn’t take it taunting her anymore. Never mind the poor woman who must have been extremely shocked by this unexpected assault on her mole. The distracting little hair was gone and all was right in the world again – well, in my grandmother’s world at any rate!

Now, despite the fact that my grandmother lived in English-speaking countries for well over sixty years, she never quite mastered the language. Yes, she could speak English, but she never lost her Czech accent, she sometimes mixed up vocabulary and she had a habit of using inappropriate and often cringeworthy words and associations – although they could also be quite funny if you weren’t busy dying of embarrassment.

Enter Mr Bond. No, I’m not talking about James Bond, but a particularly stiff and starchy pastor with little to no sense of humour and a very staid outlook on life. In fact, he was probably the type of man who didn’t even watch the James Bond movies.

But, of course, as soon as my grandmother discovered his name was Bond, she immediately made an association to James Bond. And the biggest James Bond movie at that time, back in 1965, was ‘Thunderball’ starring Sean Connery.

There’s no denying that associations can be a very useful and clever way to remember things – provided they help you to remember the correct things. And this is where associations can be dangerous, because sometimes they backfire on you, which is exactly what happened when my grandmother saw Mr Bond several weeks after their first encounter.

The strait-laced pastor greeted my grandmother and her family in a very formal and polite manner. He hardly expected my grandmother to exclaim quite cheerfully, “Oh, I remember you! You’re Mr Thunderballs!”

I don’t know what Mr Bond’s reaction was to his new name, but I’m sure he was a little shaken if not stirred. In an instant, he had gone from being the respectable Mr Bond to the risqué Mr Thunderballs. And while there may have been an awkward silence when Mr Bond’s face turned slightly red with displeasure, my grandmother was never one to let her faux pas get her down. In fact, she was rather good at pretending she hadn’t done anything wrong at all.

Mr Thunderballs, however, probably remembered that irksome comment for the rest of his life. It was the day he starred in the unglamorous ‘Thunderball’ remake with the beautiful Czech girl who didn’t realise he was actually the beloved hero, Mr Bond. But then, perhaps, he should have paid more attention to the film’s tagline, which warned him to ‘Look Up! Look Down! Look Out!’

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