The Therapy Zone

    When I first went to Portmeirion on holiday in September 1988, I arrived on the Saturday the week after the Prisoner Convention that year. I stayed in the self-catering cottage of Lower Trinity. There was a sign on the wall, its read ‘Private.’ I was sitting in my cottage in the late afternoon, having a cup of coffee and  flicking through the television channels. I remember that there was a video channel, you could telephone reception and book a film for the night, if no-one had beaten you to it of course. However each evening episodes of ‘the Prisoner’ were screened on Portmeirion’s hotel video channel. That was a real novelty, sitting in a cottage in The Village, while at the same time glancing out of the window half expecting to see Number 6 crossing the Piazza as he did on the day of his arrival in The Village.
   But it was that sign Private, did that help instigate the Village signs with the word private after every number? After all they could simply have had the number of the cottage, there was no need to add the word private. But of course there’s the irony in the use of the word private, in a Village which thrives on the fact that there is no privacy anywhere!

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