Tuesday, 17 January 2017

Bureau of Visual Records


    Number 12 encounters Number 30 something, its difficult to make out her number, after leaving his cottage. They have never met before although the young woman implies that they have.
   I wonder if the elderly gentleman in the wheelchair might be her father? But on second glance, is the man in the wheelchair wearing a scarf normally worn by Number 2? The scarf is certainly suggestive of that. Also he’s wearing a pink blazer with black piping, the only other citizens to do that are Number’s 13, 113b, 113c, and Number 100. What’s more the face behind that tinted visor has the look of Number 2 of ‘A Change of Mind,’ only it’s not him of that I’m sure.  And the way that yachting cap is perched on his head like that, well if the tinted visor doesn’t make him look stupid, then the cap is the icing on the cake, and does!
    So perhaps her father in the wheelchair is a former Number 2, and the young woman his daughter whose duty is now to look after him. Why is he allowed then to wear the scarf? Perhaps being a former Number 2 they have, for whatever reason, allowed him to retain his rank, like the General in ‘The Chimes of Big Ben,’ but without the authoritative power which goes with the number!
    Why anyone, and I include Number 51 the watchmaker in this, would bring their daughter to The Village is beyond me, unless young women like Number 30 something and 50 were born in The Village, their mothers having died. And in turn that would suggest they either came to The Village as a family, or had lived there for so long they became a family! This is of course pure speculation. The young woman might not be related to the man in the wheelchair at all, but a visitor to the Old People’s Home, or a care worker who takes senior citizens out and about The Village occasionally. But he could still be a former Number 2!

Be seeing you

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