to think my brother's friend is an MI6 spy?

[faintpinkline]

She has a first class degree from Oxford, a phd from Yale, speaks fluent Arabic and looks completely unassuming - pretty, brunette, petit, always cheerful and friendly. She has a job in some obscure branch of the civil service and is abroad more than she's at home

I've changed a detail or two just in case she actually IS but AIBU to wonder?

Oooh, maybe she is. My sister used to hang out with embassy spy types. She said they were a bit weird.

If she is then she's definitely reading this and on to the fact that you know.

I expect you will be "disappeared" very shortly.

(Do MI6 do that?!)

She could well be

But just for the record, MI6 advertise vacancies in all my local papers.

No qualifications are needed, just fluency in a certain language (specified) and a searchable, clean history.

Well if you never hear from me again you'll know what's happened

Maybe not a spy, just one of those all round successful, intelligent, cheery and pretty much perfect women you come across once in a blue moon who you want to throttle.. after you have finished doing the dishes and the school run, and when they return from their latest trip to Dubai.

We sat next to a spy at a wedding. She was pleasant and quiet and the most unmemorable girl you could meet actually I can't remember much about her but found out later what she did.

Poster deleted by M umsnet I6....

i have the same background (although my degree is russian) and have knowledge of this area.

i'd say on what you've written, probably yes.

but its not glamorous and is terribly child-unfriendly

It's OK we all think my cousins husband is too.

I would love to be a spy. I love gossip.

I know an ex spy. You would never guess, well except from the job he does now, and that even his wife didn't realise he'd been to one place in Europe, until it came up at dinner ( not a specially secret place, just that she had never heard he'd been there). Oh the other thing is speak to him for 2 hours and what you have learnt from him will be minimal, he always redirects the conversation away, without it being obvious.
I think I know about 6 facts about him, and 3 of those I got from his wife. The other three are very very random.

My Dad was, only found out for definite since he died. should have twigged when we were told to always vary our route home from school. He worked in middle east for a rather big UK defence company. Worse thing is, looking back on it, I worked for him several times and did several 'dubious' handovers when DD1 was a baby and with me Sad but true.

I knew somebody who is a spy.

Possibly you are right.

I know two spies - sounds about right!

I worked with an american chap who thought his dad had been a washington civil servant. When his father died all sorts of people dressed in sharp suits and dark glasses, that they had never heard of turned up at his funeral and talked about the wonderful things he had done for his country. Although they never did find out what exactly they were.

He realised that his father had a whole life that they had no idea about and was most likely some sort of government agent. To this day he has no idea what his dad really did for a living .

My DM played badminton in the village hall with a friend whose husband was "something in the civil service". When he died we discovered that he had been the Head of MI6.
In fact, the area where my parents lived seemed to be full of spies and the sorts of British diplomats who were periodically expelled from foreign countries.

My brother used to work in a dodgy pub in a foreign city and there was a guy who hung out there who was so obviously a spy. He was even known as Mick the Spy (possibly even to his face). He was a really crap spy too, because he interrogated everyone who came into the pub, and as soon as he had established who there were he lost interest. They knew he was a spy, because he claimed to be a photographer but the only time he took any photos was when something dodgy military operation took place (also the blatant interrogating). Not very Spooks.

What does she say her job is when asked?

All these people who know spies....

Well they can't be very good if you all bloody know about them

DS godfather is a spy. DH did a reference for him at uni. Questions included does he drink alot? Umm how does social drinker sound?

Kitchentiles - the answer is always "civil servant"

Hmm, sounds like she is then. Why else the vagueness? How exciting!

I don't know any spies. Perhaps that means I am one

I think being a fantasist/dilettante with a private income (no need to get a proper job) would be an equally good cover. When I was in a certain social circle, there were plenty of people who tried to make out they were dead exciting; I (perhaps mistakenly) thought some of them rather boring!

I used to work with someone who used to tell everyone that he did occasional work for an agency, which required top level clearance and related to his super duper knowledge of something very clever. He told us all not to tell anyone, which I think made him a particularly trusting and dim top secret worker.