Ian McMillan: Caught in my own Colditz with a web of intrigue

Sorry if I appear a bit distracted, a little jumpy, a trifle on edge; I’m looking round for the guards, you see, and I hope nobody’s going to reduce my rations again this week. To put it mildly, I’m plumb Tenko’d out and if I see The Great Escape one more time I’ll dig a tunnel under the telly to Mr Lowe’s garden and thence to freedom in borrowed clothes.
By The Newsroom
Published 7th Jan 2013, 14:57 BST

Over Christmas I sat and watched loads of DVDs of Tenko, the classic Second World War Women’s prisoner of war camp drama, starring Bert Kwouk as the boss of the establishment, who I guess never dreamed that one day he’d be scuttling around Holmfirth in Last of the Summer Wine, which became, in its way, a kind of camp for older actors who didn’t want to do solitary. Or one-person shows as they call them in the business. When I tired of Tenko I put The Great Escape on and (spoiler alert) willed Steve McQueen to get over the barbed wire fence and Donald Pleasence not to get hurt in that small plane.

It’s odd, the hold that these stories have over us; of course the reality was terrible but that doesn’t stop people making oddly romanticised versions of what happened, years after the event. I remember as a lad seeing something about Colditz on the telly and then deciding to play prison camps with the lads. To be honest, they weren’t convinced; Chris had got a new football and him and Keith wanted to go to the top field and test it out. I whined and wheedled and eventually said that they could be the guards and I would be the prisoner and I’d try to escape and they’d try to stop me. ‘Can we try and stop you by kicking a football at you?’ Keith asked and I said that was a good idea, because I was sure I’d be able to run so fast that Keith’s wonky shots would get nearer to next door’s greenhouse than my retreating form.

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We decided that the prison should be Chris’s coalhouse because it was suitably dark and dingy and they could put the bolt across. I was happy with that because I’d secreted a torch in my duffle coat hood and I’d got a bread knife in my pocket to somehow, I wasn’t sure how, cut through the door, or something.

They arrested me. I struggled. I shouted “You’ll never put me in the hole” but they did. They put me in the coal hole. I sat there for a bit. I put the torch on. It illuminated a spider as big as a mop head. I stifled a scream and switched the torch off. I swear I could hear the spider breathing. I got the bread knife out and tried to saw at the door. Nothing happened. It was an ancient breadknife that, in my mother’s resonant phrase, “Couldn’t cut Co-op lard”. The spider appeared to be clearing its throat.

I banged on the door of the coal hole and said “I don’t want to play this anymore”. Nothing happened. I peered through the crack and I couldn’t see the lads. They must have been patrolling the perimeter. I saw Chris’s dad putting the milk bottles out. I banged on the door and shouted “Help!” but Chris’s dad took no notice. I began to panic. I hammered on the door. Was the spider humming? I think it was.

I heard the sound of a 
distant football game from the top field.