Jonathan Dodd‘s latest column. Guest opinion articles do not necessarily reflect the views of the publication. Ed
I’ve just spent six months in Milton Keynes. It’s been weird and very interesting. I thought I might tell you about it. The thing about Milton Keynes is that nobody knows much about it. Probably everyone has heard of the concrete cows, and there are rumours of a football team that used to be in Wimbledon and is now called MK Dons. That’s about as far as it goes for MK’s reputation.
I never plan to be anywhere in particular. It’s a matter of finding a job and if I can’t travel home every night I find somewhere to stay during the week. It’s not a satisfactory way of life, but that’s just the way it goes. Basically, the location of the job is completely random, and I have to make the best of my weekdays and nights in the nearest town or city.
As well as eat bed and breakfast breakfast every day
Many of my fellow-contractors find a bed and breakfast place and book up a room long-term, but that doesn’t suit me at all. I couldn’t buy all my meals all through the week as well as eat bed and breakfast breakfast every day. I need to buy and prepare my own meals, and I always set up a desk and a monitor, and I need to be able to leave stuff there over the weekend so I can travel light.
I start with a cheap hotel and aim to find a room to live in within the first two weeks, if possible. This isn’t too difficult. It used to involve buying all the local papers and making a lot of phone calls, but nowadays there are websites. I’ve always enjoyed living in shared houses or being a lodger. I get to use the fridge and cooker, even wash clothes and iron, and the other people in the house know the area and give me a bit of a social life if I want it that’s not made up of people just like me working in the same place.
It’s not a life
I learn where the supermarkets are, and I go looking for a gym and swimming pool, and of course the nearest cinemas and other places to go in the evenings. It’s not a life, and it’s nowhere as good as going home every night, but it’s better than nothing. For a person who’s busy and reasonably independent it’s not impossible to do. As long as the work isn’t too horrible or the town too depressing.
I have had my share of both good and bad jobs and places to stay, and it’s partly the possibilities of either that make it so varied and interesting. This time the work hasn’t been so good but Milton Keynes has been a revelation. Back in the Sixties I was at the Woburn Abbey Festival and saw Hendrix perform, still one of the high spots of my life. Afterwards everyone was expected to leave so the Duke could use the car park for visitors, and I found myself walking through the night up the A5.
Fenny Stratford, and Bletchley, and Stony Stratford
I still remember that night. I walked all the way from Woburn Abbey to the A5, then all the way northwards through Fenny Stratford, and Bletchley, and Stony Stratford, until a passing lorry took pity on me and my outstretched thumb in the dawn, and I slept until Coventry. But that’s another story.
I still remember the names of those three villages on the A5. Otherwise it was completely rural, with hardly any houses. If I took that journey now most of it would be right through Milton Keynes itself, at that time only a tiny village somewhere near the M1, which had only been open a few years. That’s the single most important thing to know about Milton Keynes. It has only existed for 50 years or so. The original town planners had a huge area to play with, and they were able to plan their new town. Nowadays, far more people live there than the entire population of the Isle of Wight.
Bigger than the biggest shopping centre you could ever dream of
The fathers of MK had some examples of new towns to look at which hadn’t been so successful. They decided to make lots of roads with roundabouts going roughly east-west and north-south, with roughly square shapes in between for the houses. They raised all these roads and built lots of underpasses so people could walk or ride bicycles in between these estates without going near the major roads. They left the rivers and canals and lakes, and provided for a lot of parks and green spaces, all interlinked throughout.
The result is a town that’s surprisingly green and open. Each area has local shops and is small enough to have its own character. The planners took care to vary the style and layout too. And then there’s the Centre. It’s bigger than the biggest shopping centre you could ever dream of. It’s entirely covered, and there are huge car parks on the surface that you never see. It’s a marvel. I think there’s at least one of every kind of shop somewhere in there.
The postcode of my destination and my satnav
This centre also has an area for the cinema and theatre, all the civic buildings in one place, and it’s very easy to get from one place to another, because all the roads running through have the 70mph speed limit. It’s quite amazing, and for the first few weeks it’s completely disorientating. I never went anywhere to start with unless I had the postcode of my destination and my satnav, but after a while I started to notice landmarks, and now it seems rather easy because it’s familiar.
There are subtleties built in, which you don’t necessarily notice straight away. All the main roads north-south have an extra sign that you see when you start looking, from V1 to V11 going west t- east, and they’re all named “Street”. The east-west roads stack up as H1 to H10. From north to south and they’re called “Way”. So if you forget where you are, these clues let you know your location, a bit like squares on a chess board. It becomes very easy.
The gently curving bank of the Grand Union Canal
Most of the people I met who live in MK like living there. They spend most of their time at home in their own area, but have the chance to go out to a variety of restaurants or to shop whenever they like, and it’s easy to get around. There’s a great sense of space and expansiveness. The car parks are indeed large, but there are a lot of trees in them too, so they don’t feel like concrete wastelands.
The room I found to stay in is on the second floor of a long row of townhouses that snake sinuously along the gently curving bank of the Grand Union Canal. There are fields with horses grazing on the other bank, and parks, and the Open University in the distance, but I could walk into the centre in about 15 minutes, or drive there in four. MK is a unique city in my experience. It’s hard to classify and takes some getting used to, but it grows on you.
Seven nights a week instead of three
I’m leaving this job, so I’ll be back in Ryde next week. I love living in Ryde, but I felt more at home in MK than in most of the other towns I stayed in over the years. I’ll miss it. But I won’t miss the job. That was another thing entirely. Then there’ll be the next job. It would be great to find somewhere close by so I could commute by hovercraft every day again and sleep in my own bed seven nights a week instead of three. But if it’s farther away I can only hope to find another town to stay in that’s as pleasant as Milton Keynes.
I’ll miss the concrete cows too.
If you have been, thank you for reading this.
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