I like to have a series of something on the Humax for those nights when I wake at three and know I won’t get back to sleep again. Lately it’s been Colditz, a favourite* from my youth. I thought I remembered the series quite well but it wasn’t until last night when I was watching the one where one of the officers fakes madness to escape that we got to one that I remembered almost perfectly. Nevertheless, once again I’m struck by the fact that my first watching of it is longer ago in time than the true events were when I first watched the TV version (yet at the time I’m sure I considered all of WW2 distant history).
* So inspired were my friends and I by Colditz and earlier “The Great Escape” that we had a succession of tunnels dug under the fence at the bottom of our garden through to the railway cutting beyond. When my parents sold the house there was nowhere near enough soil to refill them so many remained partially boarded up hollows. I’d love to know if successive owners of the house have ever come across the tunnels and tried to work out what they were (burrowing space aliens?).