All At The Dance Of The Dead with our own reporter

   The Ball in the evening began as a quiet affair, Number's 2 and 6 were the last guests to arrive. Everyone was in fancy dress costume, from Napoleon, to Queen Elizabeth the 1st, to a principle boy, to Arabs, cowboys and Indians, and Peter Pan.

   There was a small stringed orchestra, in 18 centaury costume to provide the music to dance to. Although Number Six didn't look as though he was in the mood for any actual dancing.

   Although Number Six goes through the motions as he questions Little Bo-Peep, who always knows where to find her sheep. What's more there was real alcoholic wine, of which the doctor-No.40, as Napoleon, said "Drink is too levelling."

  For a time I could not see No.6, he seemed to have left the Ball, but later it turned out that he could not resist poking his nose into the corridors of power, those being of the Town Hall. But later as No.6 and No.2 returned together, the Ball then took a turn for the worst. Indeed there was a trial, with No.6 put on trial for the possession of a radio set. Well I've never seen a radio set in the village, didn't know there were such things.

   The trial consisted of Little Bo-Peep as the prosecutor, No.2 as the defender, No.6 the defendant, and three judges to preside over the trial, at which No.6 was found to be guilty. Although No.6 did call a character witness who No.6 addressed the court as being "A man I think I once knew. A man who is scheduled to die, and therefore better fitted to say the things which need to be said." That of Roland Walter Dutton!

   This is Dutton, dangling Rover on the end of a stick, and by the look of him, the good doctor-No.40 has gone a step too far with his experiments! So now we'll never know what the things Roland Walter Dutton might have said.

   No.6 having been found guilty by the three judges, sentenced No.6 to death in the name of the people, the people then were to carry the sentence out in the name of justice. But what followed was simply "mob-rule" as the citizens chased No.6 though the corridors of the Town Hall, screaming and shouting, all baying for blood. Or was it No.6 leading the citizens in a gruesome ‘Dance of the Dead?’ But whichever it was, with the hunt over people began to settle down. The Ball broke up and we all went home.

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Photograph from The Deaprtment of Visual Records