The Therapy Zone

    I was writing an entry in my common place book the other day, just as an ancestor of mine also maintained a common place book. The entry had something to do with ‘the Prisoner,’ that if it wasn’t for the writing of my blog, and producing my quarterly newsletter The Tally Ho I wouldn’t know what to do with myself. Well I do, I’d be doing something else like writing a blog about my Deskanalia, which is another passion of mine. Perhaps I will do that, one of these days. The Prisoner has a nice writing bureau, and matching desk items which look to be made of leather but I can’t be sure. He has a desk blotter, but its unused seeing as he never writes with a fountain pen, always with either a ballpoint pen or pencil. A favourite scene in ‘Hammer Into Anvil’ is when Number 6 goes to the General Stores to purchase a small notebook. The shopkeeper produces a nice little selection from a cabinet behind the counter, and Number 6 selects one. I like notebooks, small pocket notebooks which are always handy to have about you. Well you never know when an idea for a piece of blog will strike.
   The Labour Exchange manager has a nice piece of deskanalia, an old style ledger which he notes everything down in by hand, instead of typing it up and putting papers in a file. In fact he had everything about Number 6 written down in his ledger, which he consulted on the question of Number 6 not taking sugar.
   Really I should make a study of all deskanalia to be found in ’the Prisoner,’ I don’t know why I haven’t thought of it before. One pen, a gold coloured biro which is given to Number 6 by Number 12 the evening the lights went out in ‘6 Private’ during ‘The General,‘ I have one just like it, except mine has Portmeirion on it. In fact I’ve several items of Deskanelia collected from Portmeiron over the years. Pencils, pencil sharpeners. Rulers, biros and fountain pens, note books of course, a handful of which are still unused. And of course Max Hora, when he used to run the Prisoner shop in Portmerion back in the 1980’s into the late 90’s sold a line in stationary. Both A4 and A5 writing paper with matching envelopes with a canopied penny farthing, later to have a black square around it. Also a variety of Prisoner ballpoint pens which had either “I am not a number I am a free man, or person” on them, together with a small canopied Penny Farthing. I still have some of those ballpoint pens. Only now I create my own Prisoner/canopied Penny Farthing headed writing paper and envelopes.
   I used to correspond with a great many fellow fans and enthusiasts of ‘the Prisoner’ over the years and decades, all by letter. But not so much these days, as most of my correspondents prefer to do via email, which of course is quicker, more convenient. But I do still enjoy writing letters, and still write to two fellow enthusiasts and long time friends by letter, and have done so on a regular basis since the early 1990’s. I have three boxes filled with files containing correspondence from my days in Six of One: The Prisoner Appreciation Society, that’s going back a good few years now. People I still remember, their faces not forgotten, but with many, contact has long since been broken. I suppose really I should clear the letters out, and would have done years ago, save for the fact that they are part of the history, part of the archive. And yet one moves on, and in more recent years I have made fresh contacts, made new friends because of ‘the Prisoner,’ and that’s good, because that is the way it should be. Now there’s a letter I must write.

Be seeing you