TAXI!

   I'm the donkey, the work horse of the Village. Ferrying people all over the place, here, there, and everywhere, just as long as they arrive back here in the end. Well I am only the local service you know. But I suppose everything is relative, because what excatly is local, just the Village, or can we stretch a point to the next town? In reality I actually left the Village on several occasions, and drove to the nearby town od Minffordd. There I took guests who had been staying at Portmeirion, and collected people who were to stay at Portmeirion from the railway station. That was rather fun, well people used to look at me, I was unusual, the local populace had seen nothing quite like me before. But what was not so much fun, and rather painful was the time that Number 6 broke off my aerial!
   I'm usually driven round the Village in a sedate state of mind, unless there's some kind of emergency, then I sound my two-tone horn or siren to warn pedestrians and cyclists alike that I'm coming and to get out of the way. But I have my exciting moments, when I was in hot pursuit of Number 6, who was running away along the beach. I turned this way and that, splashing through the water. But then my driver was hurled from me, and the Prisoner was suddenly behind my wheel. He selected a lower gear, and pressed the accelerator to the floor. The air swept over my bonnet and hit me full in the windscreen. What could I do, I was being involved in an attempted escape, and I didn't want to be mixed up in an attempted escape. Well what could I do? There was a hump in the sand, I managed to steer towards it, and suddenly the Prisoner was toppled out of the vehicle and onto the sand, hooray!
   There are but four of my type, specially adapted for life in the Village. My gleaming white paint, a special decal on my bonnet. A candy striped canopy, complete with teak wood pannelling. One Mini-Moke was given a special black and white striped canopy for Cobb's funeral. He was full of himself, the Mini-Moke not Cobb, Cobb was dead, otherwise why the funeral? All puffed up with pride he was, but pride comes before a fall, and you can hardly see the Village hearse in the finished episode, served him right.
   If memeory serves, you can see me in most all the episodes of 'the Prisoner, in fact I appear in the series more times than Patrick McGoohan, and that's claiming something I can tell you.
   I suppose that through 'the Prisoner' I have become immortal, if an inaniminate object can become immortal. Life after 'the Prisoner' was not good for any of us. We fell into other people's hands, owners who first thought of us as something unusual. But as it happened I did hear what happened to two of my kind. One actually ended up back in the Village, where life for him should have been a delight. Retired in the place where he was made famous, and owned by a man who had a passion for 'the Prisoner,' who worked in a shop dedicated to 'the Prisoner.' But it is just a pity he did not have such a passion for the Mini-Moke. For it was left out in all weathers. Not garaged at all. The salt air getting under the paint work, into the working parts, and over time the desease known as rust spread. But the owner decided to have the Mini-Moke retored, and it was, fully restored to it's former glory. But that made no difference. Restoration is one thing, maintaining it another. And for a second time the Mini-Moke was allowed to fall into disrepair. But a man came along, purchased the Mini-Moke and it lived happily ever after. You will no doubt have read about the finding of another of my kind in a Dutch barn in the Netherlands. Treated like a mule he was, forced into hard labour working on a farm until one day he was all worn out, and left to a painful death in the dark recesses of a Dutch barn! But it too will have a happy ending, as the Mini-Moke was purchased, and as far as I am aware, is undergoing a slow restoration phase.
   But it's not all sad. Many of my kind today are looked after perfectly well, being both loved and cared for. And now and again we get to go back to the place that made us famous, the Village, although you know it as Portmeirion. At a time of Convention, a 'Prisoner' convnetion, where we get to drive people all around the Village, here and there, and everywhere. Just as long as they arrive back here in the end. After all, we are only the local service.

Be seeing you