NEWPORTO PAGNELLIO
As a very young
kid my Dad as an old black Standard 8 car, I remember the registration number –
FKO 866. He then has an Austin Somerset – OOL 129. There was a rivalry among we
lads as to whose Dad drove the best car.
The M1 was Britain’s
first motorway and opened in 1959, round about the time I am speaking of and
our kiddy-car rivalry. There was a place on this new mororway we all called
Newporto Pagellio. A far distant foreign place for we lads living in The Royal
Borough of Sutton Coldfield in The West Midlands. Some of us had even been there. Well at least
to the bit of it on the Motorway M1.
Today I do not
like driving on our extensive motorway system, I would much rather drive on A
and B Roads. When I do use a motorway and stop at a service station it is never
Newporto Pagnellio as this is my local service station so hardly a place where
I am going to take a break from driving.
In the West
Country there is a service station which I often frequent for the things you
have to do when you frequent any motorway service station. A couple of years
ago I found that the station had twinned its toilet block with a village in
Africa so providing families with the basic sanitation they lacked. I checked
out how this had been achieved then brought it back to Newporto Pagnellio. No, not to the service station close to M1
Junction 14 but to the studio of Radio CRMK where I am a presenter. I shared
the idea with the bosses and twinned the radio station toilet with a family in
Uganda. So in Tickford Street Newporto Pagnellio you can find the most legendary
toilet in all of Milton Keynes.
Back to when I
was a kid, shortly after being a kid and just before I achieved the status of
teenager I had moved into secondary school. We had a teacher by the name of Mr
Holborn. Teacher is best applied as a job title rather than a description of
what he did during the day. He took our class for Art where he was passable as
a teacher, I can remember some of his lessons which is more than I can say for
most members of staff. He also took us for a session called Library. Library
? Supposedly Holborn was charged with
encouraging us to read. I actually wonder if he could read himself !
What the heck a
book by criminologist George Sava was doing on the library shelf frequented by
twelve years olds I can not comprehend but at that age I took down Surgery And
Crime by George Sava, read and enjoyed it.
Never mind about
that, let me tell you about another of Holborn’s Library lessons and how he connected
The Royal Borough of Sutton Coldfield with Newporto Pagnellio.
“Ian Flemming,” Holborn
said, “James Bond, nobody will read this stuff in five or ten years time. It is
not written to last.”
Doh ! We are talking here of 1963 and I am writing
these words in 2020. Maths ? Fifty-seven
years ago,
Go anywhere in
the world and ask someone where Newporto Pagnellio or Milton Keynes is and from
most people you will get a blank look. Mention James Bond and everyone will
have head of him. You got that bit wrong didn’t you Mr Holborn !
Ask the same
person what type of car James Bond drives and they will certainly tell you it
is an Aston Martin. In the times when Holborn was pontificating his theory that
James Bond was a flash in the pan 007 drove an Aston Martin DB5. If you want to
buy that classic car today it will cost you well in excess of half a million pounds
!
So what has this
got to do with Newporto Pagnellio ? Everyone in Milton Keynes knows that
Newporto Pagnellio is the home of Aston Martin. These cars and their driver
James Bond are icons of the city that never was. Bond – James Bond, we all know
you have access to Her Majesty, we saw you help her parachute into the opening
of London 2019 so could you have a word in her ear and ask her to grant Milton
Dreams city status ?
What was the first
James Bond film you ever saw ? For me it
was Thunderball released on 29th December 1965. I may have been
fifteen at the time but it was brave of my parents to take their teenage son to
a film with violence and sex at its centre.
I am a Bletchley man,
a West Bletchley man where the biggest secret service operation of all time
took place at Bletchley Park. I don’t think that Alan Turin and all the other ultra
secret codebreakers drove Aston Martins. For a brief time I was a Newporto
Pagnellio guy. Just for six moths after we were married Maureen and I lived in
James Bond country before moving to our present home in West Bletchley. At that
time in Newporto Pagnellio there was The Elecra Cinema run by two sisters. A
tiny but ultra friendly place, not a multiplex. No, we did not go there to
watch James Bond but we did enjoy Star Wars.
Sadly The Electra is long gone along with The Studio Cinema in Bletchley
to be replaced by The Milton Keynes Slug aka the Xscape. I fear The Electra is
a forgotten landmark.
So Newporto
Pagnellio you have a legendary place in my childhood and teenage years and most
certainly a legendary place in Milton Dreams.
Let me end this
chapter with a quote from Newporto Pagnellio’s famous son:
My dear girl, there are some things that just aren’t done.
Such as, drinking Dom Perignon ’53 above the temperature of 38 degrees
Fahrenheit. That’s just as bad as listening to The Beatles without earmuffs.
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