HALT!

    Readers of my blog will no doubt remember this previous entry, although the two images have been better manipulated for clearer clarity.

    What’s that sign doing there, it reads HALT. The sign is seen a little way on the bend in the road, for a couple of seconds in ‘Arrival’ after No.6 is being driven away from the hospital. And can be seen again in ‘Checkmate’ when No.8 is following No.6 and the Rook in a taxi. It suggests that taxis are not permitted passed that signpost. Not that any notice was taken if that’s the case. The sign doesn’t appear as other signposts about the village. So is it a production sign to do with filming of ‘the Prisoner’ if so the Mokes didn’t stop at the HALT sign. So the signpost might have nothing to do with the filming, but more to do with Portmeirion itself, although it doesn’t have a permanent look about it.           

   So why repeat this entry? Because of the following amendment.    Quite recently my wife and I were watching episode 3 of ‘Lord Peter Wimsey – The Unpleasantness At The Ballona Club,’ and in a scene in which a Rolls Royce is being driven along a country road a signpost suddenly at a 3-way intersection loomed up at me on the television screen…….a HALT sign! 

    The sign cannot be a proper road sign because it doesn’t look like one and has the same temporary look as the one in Portmeirion, and besides as the Rolls Royce drives passed, the driver has the right of way, so there is no reason for the car to have to stop. So I can only imagine such signposts do have something to do with filming after all, because this cannot simply be a coincidence, and in both cases the directors seem happy to have the signpost in camera shot. Probably they think such a signpost would go by unnoticed. The signpost speaks for itself, but what its significance is concerning filming I have absolutely no idea. Perhaps someone can say. If it means simply stop, do not go beyond this point, well the car didn’t, it drove straight passed the sign and carried on its way, just as the two Mini-Mokes did in ‘The Prisoner.’

Be seeing you