Many Happy Returns!

    It wasn’t so many happy returns even when Number 6, or to use his London name ZM73, arrived back home to No.1 Buckingham Place! He was in effect a penniless exile. As much out of place in London as he had been on the day of his arrival in The Village!

Then he found someone else, the widow Mrs. Butterworth, living in his home, the lease of the house which still had six months to run when he was abducted by the two Undertakers. Not only that, but, but she had bought his beloved Lotus Seven which he built with his own hands. Since when was an Estate Agent also a car salesmen? More than that, his name as former owner of the car had been removed from the logbook of the car, in fact it was a completely new logbook!

    And there were the doubts he had of his whereabouts. Once alone in the study of his former home, he looked for reassurances, out of the window at the skyscraper in the other street. Listening to the dialling tone of the telephone, something missing from his phone back in The Village. And spoke about an area of dry rot behind the writing bureau which was made good about six months ago {he obviously meant 6 months before his abduction}. The bathroom door slides opens to the left. The sink is on the right as you go in, and the hot and cold tapes of the shower which had been put on the wrong way round. Mrs. Butterworth said that he didn’t have to prove anything, that she believed him. But it wasn’t so much for Mrs. Butterworth’s sake that he was proving his knowledge about the house, but for his own.

   And things didn’t get much better when he paid a call on the Colonel, having to explain about his disappearance, about The Village, and to make his report sound plausible to two doubting Thomas’s! The problem is, ZM73 resigns, he disappears, he returns, and he spins a yarn which Hans Christian Anderson would reject for a fairytale. And they must be sure you see. People defect, an unhappy thought, but a fact of life, they defect from one side to another. That’s the Colonel’s problem. But ZM73 also he’s not sure which side runs The Village. The Colonel agrees that it’s a mutual problem.

   So on the whole, was ZM73 really any better off back in London, than he was in The Village? It doesn’t seem so, and on the whole, perhaps he was better off in The Village. At least there was no doubt regarding his surroundings there!

Be seeing you