Few people get lost in prefabs. Even fewer get locked up inside prefab attics, or toppl over fifth floor prefab balconies. The great secret of prefab design is that it stretches minimalism to undreamt of heights. There is no fear of darkened basements in prefabs, or nightmares of walking down endless corridors in search of the bedroom you kip in, or of being gripped by moments of terrifying indecision about whether to use the downstairs or the upstairs toilet, or of succumbing to reckless thoughts of sliding down banisters. Compact uncluttered clarity of thought is what prefab living is all about.
Hardly a week goes by without hearing of someone plunging to their death over the cliff of their stairs. The phrase "as safe as houses!" is oxymoronic! That said, you have to hand it to members of the Stair-Makers Guild for managing to keep their dark lethal secret a secret for so long. "Man falls to his death down prefab stairs!" only has credibility as a headline in Mad magazine. (Last week's Mad! magazine special "look on the bright side!" issue carried an intriguing 'true life' report of how a clock on a motor car dashboard miraculously started working again for the first time in twenty-five years! This vintage "good news" event was a result of the said motor car crashing into a lamp post, killing the driver andpassenger, mowing down three pedestrians, and decapitating a stray dog.)
It cannot be said that the design of our own prefab is faultless. The steps that lead down from the back door into the yard are far too steep. Like the psychopath who lives next door they are a potential disaster that is yearning to happen.
For most of the time prefabs give off ethereal vibes which have a mellowing effect on frayed nerves. Yet as Adrian Denton in prefab number 36 will tell you, life on prefab estates likes ours has its "dark side." Adrian himself was once punched from one end of the green to another - and then hit with a leather belt! Moreover this grizzly incident took place directly in front of his own prefab. This is the prefab where his old man - a stony-faced bus conductor known as Hawkface - spends most of his free time staring out of the front window and watching his neighbours' every move.
So how, you have to wonder, did the coiled-attack machine known as Hawkface react when his own son was being so grievously assaulted within yards of his very own prefab? This is a trick question since it was Hawkface who was doing the assaulting.
Not that Hawkface would ever dare to take on Miss ('Pat' to her friends) Wafer Thin. Miss Wafer Thin was placed on this earth in order to support the philosophical contention that essence (inner reality) should not be confused with appearance (how things seem). Miss Wafer Thin might look like a pushover in any physical confrontation, but pushover she is not. Should any of Miss Wafer Thin's pupils step out of line her frail-looking knobbly elbows and puny fists are instantly transformed into manic razor-sharp flailing machete windmills. When the kid who wants to become a jockey was overheard making a derogatory remark about his new step-parents Miss Wafer Thin immediately took him on a ten circuit canter around the classroom and periodically hurled him over the imaginary fences that Miss Wafer Thin planned to have painted on the walls. Walk by this school hall even today (it stands between the churchyard and the My Full Moon public house) and you will notice that the indents made by the irrational exhuberance of those happy school days of yester-year are still visible.
When Miss Wafer Thin's work-out exercise was completed she would calmly sit the remnants of her self-traumatised class down and gently tell them how good the Germans were at making toys.

Charles Dickens: "In the little world in which children have their existence, whosoever brings them up, there is nothing so finely perceived and so finely felt, as injustice."