No. 127: The NSA want me.

Late last night I arrived in Phoenix, Arizona. My flight had been delayed, customs had been hard work, and I had missed my planned dinner engagement. I was hungry, tired and irritable. 

Imagine my delight therefore to find on my hotel bed a large family-sized pack of Snickers, complete with a welcome card, apparently from the NSA. It read 'From the NSA - the only part of government that actually listens'. Next to the chocolates was a small and suspicious-looking technical device, about 5 cm square. It was either a tracking device to monitor my every move while on US soil, or a communication tool that would provide me with details of my next secret mission, if only I could work out how to make it play. 

I opened the chocolates and waited for something to happen. 

Jet lag caused me to wake 3 hours later. It was 3am local time but my body thought it was mid morning. I promptly ate 20 fun-sized Snickers (a breakfast of kings if ever there was one..) and re-examined my NSA gifts. I was none the wiser. If this was the NSA's recruitment technique for potential new spooks then it had a lot going for it. The chocolates were an immediate plus and the 'peeping while you are sleeping' tag line on their card suggested a level of self depreciating organisational humour that appealed. 

Later, when I joined the dozen or so other attendees at my business engagement I asked if anyone else had received a similar welcome gift. I was alone. I was special. I had been carefully selected. One might argue that I did not demonstrate my best secret agent skills by sharing, loudly and proudly, the news about my chocolates (sadly now all gone) and my comms device. 

It was at this point, just as I was beginning to believe that I had been especially selected, that it became clear that Debbi Madigan, Executive PA to Trevor Hill of Fathom, was the source of my gifts. She had read my earlier Note about how 'they' know just how many Snickers we eat from our hotel mini-bars and had decided to welcome me to her home state, with some true Arizona hospitality. I confess that a little bit of me died on realising that the NSA do not adopt a Christmas-Elf approach to espionage. Confectionary and comfortable beds is surely an excellent way to make the world a better place.  

My inability to be selected as a new spook is probably for the best.  I have never been good at secrets. I am more Inspector Clouseau than James Bond.