Thursday, October 06, 2005

Where?

Just had a day off.
Just been to a place called Milton Keynes.
In the 40s the socialists decreed that 'New Towns' would be built; the 'slum' dwelling populations of the real cities would be 'decanted'(yes,decanted!) ie ethnically cleansed, into these new barracks.

The jewel in the crown would be the entirely non-organic New City of Milton Keynes.
Not to be confused with John Maynard Keynes (except in spirit), the new city would be a paeon to the 'science' of planning, with residential and 'industry' areas kept separate, and a grid syste copied from Amerika.

If I tell you that the local newspaper is still called 'Citizen' in 2005, you'll get the picture.

All the main roads on the grid are four-lane highways, with speed limits of 70mph, so pulling out in front of the Politbureau's convoy is not advisable.
They have wonderful names such as H8 and V4, so navigation is easy.

Trouble is, there's nowhere to go.

The alleged centre of the city has acres of car parking intersperced with glass lozenges that sit in so much space they practically moo. There is a 'shopping centre' lozenge, a 'railway station' lozenge( an enormous block with two platforms underneath), and various other city-type buildings.
By the time they built the arena, lozenges were out of fashion, so it is some sort of curved thing.

However, they apparently built lots of cycle-paths. Which is nice.

Anyway, I took my camera.

Having found nothing to photograph, I obtained this stock picture of the things that really put Milton Keynes into popular lore.

These cows sit by a road and are made of concrete.
I understand that they were painted later.

No comments: