The Village - An International Community

  "It's very cosmopolitan, you never know who you'll meet"

                                             {the oriental taxi driver-Arrival}

    Take No.2 for example, being British in the majority of cases, yet in certain cases they were not. In Arrival for example No.2 is of Australian Nationality, the new No.2 was born in Bulgaria. No.2 of The Chimes of Big Ben is also an Australian. And in Living In Harmony the recruited No.2 was American, which was handy for the character of the Judge. As for the Welsh, they were represented by not only No.2-Napolean of The Girl Who Was Death, but also the President holding court during the trials of Fall Out.

    So the recruitment of No.2-Chairman of the village, was truly an International affair. The majority of No.2's no doubt all having been recruited through the British Civil Service.

   Well a self-contained unit of our own society it might be. But what about the water and electricity, the sewage. The Butchers, the Bakers and the Milk Marketing Board?

   For water there must be a reservoir in the area. Electricity means a power station, coal fired, gas fired, or a hydro-electric power station. Certainly the village would not be on the electric power grid system!

   Sewage, well there would have to be a sewage plant to deal with all the human waste generated. Unless like Portmeirion, not so many years ago before the village was put onto the main sewage network, the village had a septic tanks system which would then have to be pumped out into tankers and then taken away at night to be disposed of. A messy business, but someone's got to do it, someones got to do it!

   Regarding breakfast, what about the milk, the butter, the eggs and bacon, the corn flakes, where do they come from? Well the village farm would be an obvious answer. Because there are times when you see cows in the field next to the hospital.

   But you get the general idea anyway, that there is much to the village to which we are not privy. Much goes on behind the scenes to enable the village to function in the way it does.

Be seeing you