There are
those who are not at all happy in The Village. There are others who have
accepted the situation of their imprisonment and will die there like rotten
cabbages! And there are people like Number 48, who reject The Village. They
refuse to observe, wear, or respond to their number! And then there are others
who simply refuse to talk, like that Number 6. He refuses to talk, he rebels,
fights coercion, resists, and on occasion attempts to escape.
And yet all ‘the Prisoner’ is, all it really is, is a television
series, a television series which is almost 48 years old, but which still has
the power to captivate the senses, the mind, and us, the television viewer. The
Village isn’t real, it’s a fictional place, although the fabric of The Village
is real enough. The building, the woods, the mountains, and the sea, called
Portmeirion.
I go there most days, to The Village, oh not physically, but
mentally, in the imagination. I go not as a prisoner, nor warder, I go there to
escape! Although I’ve not back been to Portmeirion since 2003. However I
suppose it could be said that both Portmeirion and The Village of ‘the
Prisoner’ are one and the same place, farcically if nothing else!
Mind you there are two Villages now. One is surrounded by woods on
three sides, and then the mountains beyond. Then there is the estuary leading
into the sea. As for the other Village, it is in the desert, with nothing but
sand dunes in all directions for hundreds, perhaps thousands of miles, and the
mountains beyond. While the first Village has been very easy to get to know,
the second Village is much more difficult, it’s the size you see. While the first
Village is, well a village. The second is much larger, more the size of a city
if the map of The Village is anything to go by, and thereby far less easy to
get to know. The Village Shop, the Clinic, Palais 2 the residence of Two are
known, as are a few streets and houses. In any one street if a house number is
53 for example, it does not follow that the house on either side are 52 and 54,
as in the case of 909, the house to the left of 909 is 59!!! It is known where
Six’s apartment is, where 93, 909, and 131 live. Where Palais 2 is, and the
Clinic, the Go-Inside bar, also The Village Shop. However the vast majority of
the Village remains a mystery. Therefore it is far easier to go to the original
Village in one’s imagination, than it is the one in ‘THEPRIS6NER!
Be seeing you
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