Caught On Camera!

    Interesting that Engadine, seen here behind the wheel of her Alfa Romeo with Number 6 in the passenger seat, has parked the car on the lawn of the Old People’s Home in the Village!

   Yes it is a production still, and that is a blue screen, but surely its film of Paris that should be projected not the Old People’s Home!

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Numberless!

   “Well Number……..?” the woman asked
   “Well enough, thank you for asking” he replied
   “I wasn’t enquiring about your health. I was wondering what your number is” the woman asked somewhat brusquely.
    “Oh, sorry. My mistake.”
    “Don’t worry, we all have to make mistakes. Sometimes we have to Number……………?”
    “I haven’t got a number.”
    “What do you mean you haven‘t got a number? Everyone has a number.” the woman said.
    “I am a numberless person, a free spirit roaming an alien world!”
    The woman looked at him “You shouldn‘t talk like that, someone might hear. You know you’re not who I might have expected you to be.”
        The man looked puzzled “Really, and who might you have expected me to be?”
    “Six!”
    “Oh I’m no Number Six” the man told her.
    “So what are you doing here?”
    “What, in The Village?”
    “Where else?”
    “I don’t really know, I just sort of………arrived.”
    “That’s how most people turn up here. They just arrive.”
    “Number Two is a very calming woman.”
    “Is she, I wouldn’t know, not having met her.”
    “I would expect her assistant to be the same.”
    The woman looked at the man across the table in astonishment “Surely you don’t mean me?”
    “There’s no-one else sat at this table!”
    The woman stared at him “Except for you mister no number!”
    “Look I’m not one of them, you are!”
    “I’ve had just about enough for one day!”
    “Me thinks the lady doth protest too much.”
    “How do you make that out?”
    “You asked me my number, so you’ve been assigned to me!”
    “I merely asked you your number, because you’re not wearing a badge.”
    “I thought everyone knew everybody here?”
    “The flower seller does. She knows who is ill, and who is getting better.”
   “How?”
    “Its really quite simple. If someone buys flowers for someone else, then it’s a fair bet that someone is ill in hospital. But once they stop buying flowers, it’s a fair bet that that person is getting better.”
    “Ah. And you’ve bought those flowers for………….?”
    “Myself.”
    “No-one to buy you flowers then?”
    “I’d be very careful what I’d say if I were you.”
    “Is that a threat Number Six hundred and sixty-six?”
    “Beastly to give anyone isn’t it?”
    “I bet you have the very Devil of a time here………….doctor!”
    “Your impertinence will get you nowhere” she told him
    “You know, and to misquote Oscar Wild. There’s only one thing worse than being a number, and that’s not being a number.”
    “Why is that”
    “Because then you don’t exist!”
    There came a sudden cold wind that gathered up the dust blowing it all around. And suddenly the chair opposite, where the numberless man had been seated………………………was empty!

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Exhibition of Arts And Crafts

                               “School Days!”

BcNu

Catch That Pigeon!

   I always like the way Number 6 sets his trap to catch himself a pigeon, which he baits with the remnant of a ham sandwich. I’m not sure if pigeons are partial to ham sandwiches, but no doubt it was drawn in by the bread crumbs. But never the less the trap does work. The pigeon enters the box, the pencil is knocked away, and the door of the wooden box falls shut. Then it’s not so much the remnant of the ham sandwich, but the better part of a whole sandwich, as it’s larger in the picture than the scrap of sandwich Number 6 threw into the wooden box! And even then there wasn’t that much ham in the sandwich!
   The setting of the trap by Number 6, could also be seen as a metaphor, as it’s not only the pigeon that falls into it!
   Also there must be pigeon fanciers in The Village! The pigeon in the picture has a ring about its right leg, and that ring carries an identification number, making the bird the property of a pigeon fancier, either living in The Village, or somewhere else close by. Pigeon fanciers take, or have sent, their birds to a location, any distance from home, and have them released. It’s a race you see, to see which bird arrives back home first. The time any particular bird arrives home is recorded on a clock, so that there can be no cheating. Perhaps there was a pigeon fanciers club in The Village. Either that or the pigeon stopped off for a rest from its journey!

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Quote for The Day

    “Why did you resign?”
    “What’s that sir?”
    “Oh come along boy, why did you resign?”
    “From what sir?”
    “Now my boy you know perfectly well what I’m talking about, why did you resign?”
    “I can’t tell you that sir.”
                         {The Headmaster and the pupil - Once Upon A time}
    Yes, from what did the pupil resign, the geography lesson? Certainly not from a maths lesson, Number 6 was too good at figures for that. That’s what got him recruited into the banking service of British Intelligence. British agents, working in East Germany, Russia even, the favourite would be Czechoslovakia, anywhere behind the Iron Curtain. Those British agents would need money in order to pay the members of the spy ring they had organised, and for bribing officials. Someone had to act as currier in order to take the money to wherever agents were working. That’s what Aleck Leamas started out doing in the novel ‘The Spy Who Came In From The Cold.’
    But of course Number 2 must have been in a hurry to get the ordeal over, because he certainly jumped the gun when he asked Number 6 why he resigned. Because as a pupil who had just graduated from school he hadn’t done anything with his life. But just to ask the question wasn’t good enough for Number 2, he had to try and physically drive the question from Number 6. That was quite a tussle between them on the floor. For Patrick McGoohan it was real, he had completely lost it! As for Leo McKern, it was really a struggle for his life! Just as well the Butler came along with that truncheon when he did, otherwise…….well who knows what may have happened.
   And yet even as a boy the Prisoner still refuses to give the reason why he resigned, because he told the Headmaster he couldn’t tell him that. But apparently it wasn’t secret and confidential, nor was it top secret. However that’s the way it remained, because Number 6 took the secret of his resignation to the grave with him!

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More Village

      I was sitting here at my desk thinking how THE PRIS6NER episode ‘Anvil’ looks at the morality of surveillance. Surveillance is a strange thing, powerful, yet its said that if you've nothing to hide then you've got nothing to worry about. Yet the trouble is no-one is without guilt. The trick for "Undercovers" is having to work out what it is people are guilty of. The problem is that the most innocent of actions or inactions, a deviation away from the daily norm like not keeping a Yoga class for example possibly through not feeling well, can result in citizens in The Village becoming suspect!
   In The Village I would have thought that with such modern day technology it would be possible for observers to watch the citizens from a Control Room. However that would seem not to be the case, hence the need for "Undercovers." There are different "Undercover" cells operating in The Village, and no-one knows who is in each of the cells, so that everyone in The Village is watching everyone else. Well almost everyone else, because when Two tells his son 11-12 that someone is watching him, 11-12 is surprised about this, because who would deem to be watching him, or so that is 11-12's reaction.
    It also occurs to me that 11-12 is very selfish, as he doesn't want his father, Two, to find out about his relationship with 909. So 909 or 11-12 must die, and seeing as it's not going to be 11-12 then it's got to be 909! But the trouble is Two does already know of the relationship between his son and 909.But why did 11-12 turn to 909? Perhaps to gain the love and affection he wasn't getting from his father. Sometimes all 11-12 needs is a cuddle! The relationship between 11-12 and 909 is very heavy, dark even. Seeing the way 909 accepts his death.
   It must be that everyone in The Village lives in fear. Everyone watching everyone else, or are they? After all the rumour itself, that everyone is under surveillance, could be enough to keep everyone on their guard.
    Basically everyone is nosey, we want to know each others business, we want to know what people are doing in their lives. The difference in The Village is, if someone reports you for doing something out of character, or from the daily norm, you get sent for treatment!

Breathe in….breathe out….More Village!
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Bureau of Visual Records

    Poor Number 73, she was brought to The Village through no fault of her own, just because they couldn’t find her husband! Mind you they knew the name of the hotel where her husband and the woman Mariah met. Number 2 had a photograph of the two together. So both reason and logic would suggest to put two, perhaps four men on the hotel in question to keep it under twenty-four hour surveillance. After all if the hotel was a regular meeting place, 73’s husband would surely turn up at some point.
   It had to be said that Village life didn’t suit 73, she had already tried to commit suicide by slashing her wrists, that’s why she was in the hospital. But she was good, her love and devotion for her husband stopped her from talking. Number 2 might have been described as a professional sadist. But Number 2 never actually laid a hand on 73, in fact he had not done any actual harm to her, except frighten her a little. Apart from that all he had only questioned her.
    The truth of the matter being, Number 73 didn’t jump out of her bed, and out of the hospital window to her death, until Number 6 had come bursting into the room. She had no idea who this was suddenly coming bursting into her room, he could have been anybody. Rather than perhaps a knight in shining armour, he could have been someone far worse than Number 2! She saw Number 6, became frightened, leapt out of her bed and out of the hospital window. It’s no wonder Number 2 said Number 6 would pay for his interference! 

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