The PRISONER I Never FORGOT...

Copyright relevant owner

Back around 1971, I swapped my Aurora Frankenstein plastic model kit with a nearby neighbour and classmate, George Cooper, for his Forgotten Prisoner one.  I was fascinated by the glow-in-the-dark parts, particularly the Prisoner's skull, which to me, looked for all the world like a happy, smiley, friendly wee soul.  Eventually, though, I began to miss Frankie, and George was agreeable to swapping back again.

Sometime in the '90s, I bought a long-box reissue of the kit, built and assembled it, and one day took it along to George's house on one of my occasional Saturday visits to show the model to him.  He was back in the family home, living with his father, but whether George was struck by the significance of again seeing the model in the very house its twin once resided, well, I never thought to ask him.  It fascinated me though.

A few years ago, I obtained another long-box reissue, this time with the 'Famous Monsters Of Filmland' logo on the box (as per the original), but as yet, I haven't built and painted it and don't know if I ever will, as I've loads of unbuilt models awaiting my attention.  However, I recently splashed out (Oi, behave yourselves!) on a square-box reissue, released by Atlantis, with a logo in the same style as Aurora was using in the '70s.

I haven't yet removed the shrinkwrap, but I will, as I'd like to see the luminous parts again, which I haven't seen in-the-flesh 'bone' in around 55 years, so it'll be a case of 'friends reunited'.  Below is my '90s acquisition of the kit, followed by the comic strip from Famous Monsters, relating the details of how the Prisoner came to be forgotten - though not by me.  Did you perchance own this kit back in the day?  Reminiscences welcome.

(Incidentally, 'Castel-Mare' translates as 'Castle by the Sea'.)

You could say he's a 'model prisoner', so he should've been released years ago

The following tale is similar to Poe's The Cask Of Amontillado

Click images to enlarge, then click again for optimum size.

The WINDOW In The HALL...

Every night when I go to bed, I pass a small window on the hall landing halfway up the stairs.  In fact, I pass it whenever I go up (or down) stairs, not just when I go to bed, but that's neither here nor there.  I've done so for 50 out of the last 54 years, the four-year difference being on account of my family moving to another house after 11 years and returning here four years later.  Regular Crivvies know the details already, so I'm just setting the scene for new visitors to Crivens.

When living in that other house, my way home from my Town's main Shopping Centre enabled me to see the landing window of my former domicile through a gap between a row of houses and a block of flats a little distance away.  (Obviously, I could also see it when going in the opposite direction.)  Sometimes, at night, the hall light would be on and the window illuminated, and I'd imagine I still lived there and was looking through a time warp to when I yet inhabited the house.

Now that I'm back here, it seems strange to think there was a period I could gaze on the exterior of the window from afar, and its interior is now once again part of my everyday life.  Sometimes, I just can't help imagining, as I pause on the hall landing on my way up or down the stairs, that an ethereal younger version of myself is heading home to that other house and glancing over at the window behind which I stand, on his way back to a home he no longer lives in.

Cue Twilight Zone theme?