Thought For The Day

    Next year ‘the Prisoner’ will be 49 years old. The start of the production of the series will have reached its 50th anniversary the following year, that in itself is something to celebrate. However, the real celebrations, whatever they will be, shall surely have to wait another for another year after that.
    All these years, the better part of my life thus far, has been given to a television series. Oh other far more important things have happened in my life, just as it has in other people’s lives, well just ask my wife. Thankfully my wife shares my passion for ‘the Prisoner,’ which is just as well I suppose. But whatever has taken place in my life, ‘the Prisoner’ has always remained with me, in mind, heart, and thought. And in more recent years, has become a driving force within me. Can a television series be able to do that? Is it right that a television series should be able to do that? Perhaps that means there is a weakness in me, an addiction, which I cannot, nor will ever want, to give up.
    I have said several times that ‘the Prisoner’ is but a television series, but it is more than that, much more. Otherwise it would not have captivated the minds of so many enthusiasts over the decades, and why the series has endured the passage of time, attracting new fans all the time.   For myself, as a boy of 12 years of age, I believe ‘the Prisoner’ gave me something. I don’t know what it was, I cannot explain it. Thinking about it I shouldn’t even have been watching the series at that age, my father certainly didn’t approve of my watching the series. After all, ‘the Prisoner’ was never meant to be a children’s television series. And yet it stimulated, and at the same time, captivated the minds of so many young children, some even as young as 9 years of age. I used to rebel against my father, I never wanted to be what he wanted me to be. So I suppose ‘the Prisoner’ fed my rebellious mind. I wanted to be me, not forged into something someone else wanted me to be. I was too young for escape at the time. To run away, well what would have become of me then? No, ‘the Prisoner’ taught me that there are other ways. So each week, for seventeen weeks, I would immerse myself in ’the Prisoner.’ At that time, for me, The Village was somewhere for me to escape to, if only in my imagination.
    And today? Well I’m still there, in The Village, and I take up my square on the chessboard each day when I sit at my computer and write my daily ‘Prisoner’ blog, as I do now. I am a willing villager, having arrived of my own free will. I’m perfectly happy, and look not for escape, but live in the hope of being back on the chessboard tomorrow!

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