Prismatic Reflection

    The Prisoner, it means what it is! But what is it? That is the question. If someone can’t chuck up a job things have come to a pretty pass. But it wasn’t an ordinary job was it? I mean the Prisoner wasn’t a milkman - window cleaner, butcher, baker, or candlestick maker! He was a man who held a position of a secret nature, top secret, confidential job from which he resigned. And was he so naive to think that “they” would simply let him walk away? He knew what the consequences would be, that’s why he was trying to get away. But like Cobb they came for him before he was expecting them!
   So there he was, abducted from his London home to the Village, by a pair of Undertakers, one of whom nerve gassed him through the keyhole of the study door. The unconscious body carried out into the street in a coffin, placed in the back of a hearse, and driven off. Simple, foolproof. After people would look, and think nothing wrong of Undertakers removing a coffin from a house into the back of a hearse. I have seen it done, and I’ve stood still, with my hat off in respect for the dead. But how do I know that’s what was taking place? It might have been have been an abduction to the Village for all I knew. Unlikely I know, but we live in a world where the unlikely is becoming more and more common place everyday.
    The Village is a place where people turn up, people who know too much, or too little, a place that has many ways of breaking a man. Everyone is a number. The Prisoner is Number 6, Number 2 is the Chief Administrator, Chairman of the Village. Number 2 is second to 1, who is thought to be the man on the red phone who speaks to Number 2, who receives instructions from Number 1. But how do we know that? As far as I am concerned it has been merely assumed that it’s Number 1 on the telephone, we have never heard the voice on the telephone speaking to Number 2, it could be anyone.
    It is said that Number 6 is Number 1, that they are the alter ego of the other. But not for the sixteen episodes before ’Fall Out’ he wasn’t. It was only because of the advent of ‘Fall Out’ that Patrick McGoohan came up with that one. Before that Number 1 cold have been anyone, even a consortium of people. Number 1 may have only been the figure head of the Village, a go between the Village and some disembodied power that was ultimately behind the Village. Such as the Assembly we see in ‘Fall Out.’ No one man could create the Village, unless it is all in the mind! And if we take that avenue of thought, we know where that will lead don’t we readers? That way lies towards madness! And Number 6 isn’t mad, well not according to Village medical records he isn’t! Only an insane mind would create something like the Village, put himself in it, so to torture himself! If the Village is of the mind, then there is no escape for the Prisoner, no escape for any of us. For we each create our own Village of the mind, and carry it with us where ever we go. Only through death can escape be achieved, so they say. But how many of us can be sure of that?
    The Village, oh the quiet, the many peaceful times I have spent there, and I’m not the only one to do so. And yet, and yet there have been other times when I’ve been to the Village and everyone has become a number. Going about dressed in Village costume, or uniform, and I have been amongst their number. But it is a long time since I was in the Village, very nearly ten years in fact. Ten years this end September. I no longer feel the need you see, well it comes to us all, well nearly all, as some hang on the to the old ways for too long. What I mean is, I’m too old for play acting the Prisoner. Mind you, at this year’s Prisoner Convention a man with grey hair portrayed the Prisoner, as a well as a very large built man. I’m not large built, and there’s hardly a grey hair on my head. So when I look about, perhaps I’m not so far away from being the Prisoner after all.
    I see ‘the Prisoner’ in so many other things. Enthusiasts of ‘the Prisoner’ talk of symbolism within the series, I have myself, when something is symbolic for, or of something else. But it’s also easy to see something symbolic of ‘the Prisoner’ in other television series, like ’the One Game,’ ‘Cape Wrath,’ ‘Jekyll,’ and ‘Scapegoat.’ And films like ‘The Truman Show,’ and ‘Dead of Night.’ A few evenings ago I watched an episode of a BBC television comedy series called ‘Open All Hours,’ starring Ronnie Barker and David Jason. Its basically about a tight-fisted shopkeeper by the name of Arkwright. In the episode in question ‘The Ginger Man,’ Arkwright misspells a word white washed on the shop window, spelling “speciol” with a “O”. A customer comes into the shop to point out the misspelling to Arkwright. The man was wearing spectacles, an old balaclava, a dark single breasted jacket, and a grey polo neck jersey. I could not help but think that this shabby looking man, dressed in the attire of a No.2 of the Village, might have been a refugee. Evacuated from the Village, and later finding himself living in a north England town, but still dressed in the uniform of the Village as No.2.

 http://youtu.be/iItRaFo18Co

 It was a fanciful notion to say the least, but that is how it struck me at the time, as these things do on occasion. Perhaps I need a holiday, somewhere quiet, somewhere different…….Portmeirion…….maybe not!

I’ll be seeing you