MILTON KEYNES MEDIA FAILS TO ENGAGE AND SUPPORT RESCUING A LOST LEGEND WITHIN OUR CITY

MILTON KEYNES MEDIA FAILS TO ENGAGE AND SUPPORT RESCUING A LOST LEGEND WITHIN OUR CITY

I have now finished writing the DRAFT text for Milton Keynes The City Of Legend – One hundred and sixty-nine thousand, three hundred and six words. Within this I want to rescue some lost legends. The first of these being The Satellite Pub on Whaddon Way.

This is the DRAFT text for that chapter.

How old were you when you had your first pint in a pub ?

You’ll probably need to be of my aging generation for that question to have anything of relevance, the pub trade today in the third decade of the twenty-first century is nothing like that of 1967 when Milton Keynes was born.

So how old was I when I had my first pint in a pub ? I would have been sixteen and indeed in the year of 1967. NAUGHTY BOY ! A lawbreaker, the legal age to drink alcohol in a public house was eighteen.

In his book The Ultra Secret, F. W. Winterbotham says that The Three Trees was the watering hole of Bletchley Park’s codebreakers. During my time as a student teacher in Bletchley Park my watering hole and that of my mates was The Eight Belles. It was there we spent money from our student grant. (Note the wording student grant and not student loan. It is not only the pub trade that has declined in modern-day society !)

It was in 1977, ten years after my first illegal pint, that I learned to drive. I made a conscious decision to stop drinking alcohol as it simply did not equate with being behind the wheel of a car. If I had not taken this step then perhaps I could write another book: The Legendary Pubs of Milton Keynes. From Woughton on the Green to Milton Keynes Village all the way to the world famous Cock and Bull Inns of Stony Stratford our pubs have more legends per pint of beer than any other establishments in the land.

I want here to talk about three original pubs on Whaddon Way, Bletchley, and one which I am asking my readers to lift out of obscurity and celebrate its lost heritage.

Once upon a time there were three public houses on Whaddon Way; The Dolphin which is still there, The White Hart which today is the site for a school and The Satellite whose original building stands today accommodating a branch of the Co-op !

On 10^th July 1961 America launched the world’s first telecommunications satellite TELSTAR. I believe it is still in Earth’s orbit but ceased functioning shortly after its launch. How

many telecommunications satellites are orbiting the world today ?

As kids in the summer of 1961 we used to mistune our valve operated family radio sets, listen to the squeaking static and say we were tuned into Telstar. My Dad I remember saying we should invest money in satellite communication as it was the future. A bit eccentric my Dad !

I am not a fan of technology and the way it controls our lives but I never drive a car without using a sat nav – Satellite Navigation System.  Sometimes I set it to give me a route to a destination I am unfamiliar with but in general I like having the map silently on screen showing me where I am, the speed I am driving and the speed limit of the road. It is good to be able to check out where the petrol stations are and around breakfast time McDonald’s and its waiting hash browns. All of this comes from my little car being satellite connected to a twenty-first Telstar descendent up in the sky.

The year after Telstar’s launch the British pop group The Tornados released a fantastic piece of music which made it to number one in the UK charts and across the Atlantic and the home of the world’s first telecommunications satellite it also hit number one. Instrumental music does not come much better than this. (Check it out on YouTube and its iconic music will be beamed to you by way of a telecommunications satellite !)

For many years the Satellite Pub stood proudly on Bletchley’s Whaddon Way celebrating Telstar and its theme tune from The Tornados. It was at the turn of the century that the pub trade went into decline, one of its victims was our iconic Satellite Pub. It became a branch of Morrissons Local, my son was its manager, then moved to become a branch of the Co-op. Today it is a lost and forgotten heritage of Milton Keynes.

Did you learn about the Rochdale Pioneers when you were at school ? In 1844 a group of mill workers who history has named The Rochdale Pioneers opened a little shop which was the first Co-operative Society store around which today our Whaddon Way satellite orbits. Here’s an iconic name from Milton Keynes legend, who knows who Wilf Griffin was ? As head of Milton Keynes Co-op in our city’s early days and having met him on a couple of occasions I can tell you he was a very special man. Google his name and you will not find anything. That is sad !

If Wilf was still around today I would not be ending this twist of our Kaleidoscope in the way I am, Mr Griffin would have come up with the idea way before and would not have left it as an idea, he would have made it happen. It does not sit on land which was within his estate and several decades after he left us but for certain Mr Bletchley aka Sir Herbert Leon would never have allowed our legend to be lost.

Can we persuade the Co-op to put a small plaque outside its door celebrating The Satellite ? Nothing major or complex, just a simple notice preserving this part of Milton Keynes heritage.

A BIT OF AN AFTER THOUGHT !

Milton Keynes is infested with silly little four wheeled robots scurrying all over the place

delivering bags of crisps and the odd Mars Bar !  I presume they use satellite communication to dribble their way around our city streets. As a vegetarian I totally oppose the slaughter of any animal but a robotatarien I am not so show me the way to the robot abattoir and I heard them all down its road ! Beam me up Scotty !

I have written to both the CEO of Co-op UK and to the local branch manager but have not received replies. I am thinking postal strikes may be causing the delay. I have asked local MP Iain Stewart and Milton Keynes Councillor for West Bletchley Adam Rolfe to write letters supporting this simple campaign.

I e-mailed our local media, such as it is, one week ago seeking support but universally nobody has replied. In contrast, posting on social media I received a little over four hundred likes of support.

BBC Look East – try looking West and you may notice there is a place on the horizon called

Milton Keynes.

BBC Three Counties Radio – how many listeners do you have ? Is it as many as are supporting on social media are engaging ?

Milton Keynes Citizen – Can you imagine how quickly the original newspaper and the Bletchley Gazette would have grabbed hold of this.

As an attempt to spur action and have our media engage with the citizens of Milton Keynes my plan is to publish this blog then over then week-end Saturday 26^th and Sunday 27^th November see how many people will read and engage with the project. Then next week I will wave that number in front of the media and try again.