Bond girls conform to a fairly well-defined standard of beauty. They possess splendid figures and tend to dress in a slightly masculine, assertive fashion, wear little jewellery—and that in a masculine cut—wide leather belts, and square-toed leather shoes. (There is some variation in dress, though: Bond girls have made their initial appearances in evening wear, in bra and panties and, on occasion, naked.) Nearly all of them are white; they often sport light though noticeable suntans (although a few, such as Solitaire, Tatiana Romanova, and Pussy Galore, are not only tanless but remarkably pale), and they generally use little or no makeup and no nail polish, also wearing their nails short...
The best-known characteristic of Bond girls apart from their uniform beauty is their pattern of sexually suggestive names, such as Pussy Galore. Names with less obvious meanings are sometimes explained in the novels. While Solitaire's real name is Simone Latrelle, she is known as Solitaire because she excludes men from her life...
Most Bond girls are apparently (and sometimes expressly) sexually experienced by the time they meet Bond. Quite often those previous experiences have not been positive, and many Bond girls have had sexual violence inflicted on them in the past which has caused them to feel alienated from all men—until Bond comes along...
The inspiration for all of Fleming's Bond girls may be his onetime lover Muriel Wright, who according to The Times:
has a claim to be the fons et origo of the species: pliant and undemanding, beautiful but innocent, outdoorsy, physically tough, implicitly vulnerable and uncomplaining, and then tragically dead, before or soon after marriage.
Wright was 26 and "exceptionally beautiful" when she and Fleming met in 1935. A talented rider, skier, and polo player, Wright was independently wealthy and a model. She was devoted to Fleming, despite his repeated unfaithfulness. She died in an air raid in 1944, devastating Fleming, who called Wright "too good to be true".
Queen Anne's Lace - one of our wild summer flowers - is native to Afghanistan.
Michael's sent me its first Fall Decor email. We did not get out of the first week of August for the Back to School and Fall promotions.
For some reason I wondered about the biggest diamond and what it is. The biggest diamond in the world is the Cullinan diamond - it is 3,106 carats and 1.3 pounds. It was found in 1905 in the Premier Mine (now Cullinan Diamond Mine) in Pretoria South Africa by Thomas Evan Powell. Today it is located in London and is on the head of England's royal Sceptre. It is in the picture of Queen Elizabeth at her coronation. You saw that a few days ago.
This largest diamond became nine major stones and 96 smaller diamonds that were cut from it. The Lesser Star of Africa is known as Cullinan II is part of the British crown jewels' Imperial State Crown. These precious stones live in the Tower of London. You can find out about Cullinan Mine diamonds - there are eight legends - HERE. One of those stones is the Taylor-Burton Diamond given by Richard Burton to Elizabeth Taylor for her 40th birthday.
The top 10 diamonds in the world are listed in this article HERE. The Cullinan shows up as number 3 worth 337 million euros. At position 2 is The Sancy - considered priceless in that the diamond is so rare and expensive that an exact value is not known, and finally Koh-i-Noor - the finest white diamond discovered in 1294. It means "mountain of light" in Persian and was 'confiscated' by the British East India Company and now the property of the British Crown. The possible value is over 1 billion euro - that's almost 1.5 billion Canadian dollars.
De Beers began a marketing campaign in 1938 that caused the diamond engagement ring craze. So diamonds have been popular ever since. The most diamonds set into one ring? It would be 7,777 in India on May 7, 2019. It is the "Lotus Ring". How about the biggest bling ever: a $500,000 watch with 15,000 diamonds. That's another Guinness record.
In 2018, a Coca-Cola bottle-shaped handbag was covered with 9,888 diamonds. It has the record for most diamonds set on a handbag. And there is a Gibson guitar with 11,441 diamonds.
There are pages and pages of diamond jokes. Here's an excellent example:
A lady enters a jeweller's and says "You sold my husband a diamond ring yesterday but it's the wrong size". "No problem madam, we can adjust the finger size easily". "Oh, you don't understand, you sold him a one carat size, and I take a five carat size".
