No.6 Takes It All In His Stride!

   There he is, No.6 in Many Happy Returns, having found the village deserted, he puts himself to work felling trees, clearing them of their branches. Emptying a number of oil drums down a drain, and then lashing them to the raft he has constructed. He then busies himself taking ground photographs of the village. Then having set out to sea aboard his Kon Tiki style raft, he makes himself a homemade compass, using an empty village marmalade jar, string, a cork, water, a ruler, and a magnetic needle, which he magnetises using the magnetic part of a village loudspeaker, and mainatins a log of his sea voyage.
   He sleeps only four out of each twenty-four hours, which in itself is quite remarkable. But finally, having collapsed with exhaustion, his raft is siezed by gun-runners, who he has to overcome. Then forced to abandon ship, he swims towards a light in the distance, the Prisoner is washed up on a beach. He wakes up, and scales the chalky cliffs at one point where there has been recent cliff erosion. The Prisoner is then faced with a long walk, during which he is helped by a young gypsy woman, who gives him some broth, and directions to a road.
   Having gained an unsolicited ride in the back of a van, he suddenly hears the sound of a siren, and then risks all by leaping out of the back of the van and into the road of busy London traffic! I mean to say, the Prisoner could have been knocked down by a taxi, or killed by being run over by a bus!! He then finally makes his way back to his London home, to find one Mrs. Butterworth is now living in his home, which had still six months to run on the lease. What's more this Mrs. Butterworth has apparently bought the Prisoners Lotus 7!!
   Then the prisoner has two calls to make, one in town, the other in the country, and a meeting with the Colonel and Thorpe. So having convinced the Colonel enough to have every detail of their ex-colleagues report checked, and with the cards stacked heavily in favour of the Prisoner, a search area for the village is calculated, and so the Prisoner goes in search of the village, via Gibratar, where the Gloster Meteor jet is refuelled.
   However not all goes according to the Prisoners plan, as the one time pilot of the Group Captain, has been replaced with an agent of the village, and so having been ejected out of the jet aircraft, the Prisoner is unceremoniously returned to the village at the end of a parachute! There is still no-one about in the village, it appears still to be as deserted as it was on the day he set sail abord his sea-going raft. So having returned to his cottage, Mrs. Butterworth, now No.2, arrives with a birthday cake for him. She wishes No.6 many happy returns, with a smarmy smile on her face. No.6 had gone to so much effort to get away from the village, and to be brought back so easily.........but the Prisoner takes it all in his stride, and looks out of a window to see that life in the village has suddenly returned to normal, almost instantly so. If that had been me, I don't think I could have taken it so calmly as No.6 did. I'd want to smack No.2 for one thing, so to wipe that smarmy look off her face!
I'm Piet Hein