MK Today - Saturday 31st December 2022

HAPPY NEW YEAR and welcome to 2023

What do you think the coming three hundred and sixty-five days have in store for us all ?

We’ll have a little chat about that in a moment but first I want you to write a 2023 Milton Keynes Doings List for yourself. To help you get started I am giving you a couple of challenges.

ONE: Go and find The Concrete Cows on Monks Way MK13 0PQ. Take a selfie and post it on social media.

TWO: The final chapter in MILTON KEYNES THE CITY OF LEGEND takes names from all Milton Keynes waR memorials where addresses of the fallen are known and are compiled to make MILTON KEYNES MAP OF HONOUR. Choose a street close to where you live, walk its length a take from the memorials the names of those who gave their young lives so you can live your old life and place them in your heart.

THREE: Put a date in your diary: Friday 21^st July. I’ll remind you nearer the and fix the place 

and time to meet. It will be dawn on Midsummer Boulevard, come a join me watching the sun rise down the fundamental ley-line about which the entire City of Milton Keynes was built.  Let’s take a group selfie and add it to our City’s heritage.

That’s three challenges isn’t it, not two ! Well  I never was much good at Maths. Anyway, they serve as a good introduction to what I now want to say. So read on my friends.

As the year 2020 dawned I suggested we were about to enter the Roaring Twenties with roaring being times of fun, positivity and excitement but just how evil was the breath of tooth decay from the lion that roared throughout the year. Pandemic. Lockdown. 2020 the year that never was.

Last year 2022 promised a beautiful and unique time, something our world had never seen before as we looked forward to celebrating Her Majesty’s Platinum Jubilee, what a happy time that celebration was. Within it Milton Keynes was awarded a city charter. That was something I had hoped for across many, many years but to make The City of Milton Keynes during such an event never again to be seen made it well worth waiting for.

Then so sadly shortly after the celebrations Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II passed away, in time I am sure she will be known as Queen Elizabeth The Great. The way everyone came together was an honour of thanks for Her Majesty’s long life and service. When somebody dies it is not a time for tears and grief, it is a time of celebration and thanks for all they achieved in their live.

2023 will see our new Monarch King Charles III visit Milton Keynes to confirm we are now The City of Milton Keynes. I wonder what he will think of us all.

What in your view is the most beautiful place in the City of Milton Keynes, beauty both literal from the eye’s view and metaphosphoric from the heart ?

Christ The Cornerstone on Saxon Gate is near the top of my list. As Prince of Wales oor Monarch spoke of his wanting to be The Defender of Faith and he strongly alluded to this in his Christmas broadcast. Faith does not have to mean religion. The Church of Christ The Cornerstone was the first purpose built ecumenical church in the country and as I view it both with my eyes and my heart it is a reflection of the ecumenical diverse society that makes up Milton Keynes and is at the core of our being a City.

Every Thursday Christ The Cornerstone hosts blood donation sessions where people of all

races, ages, creeds and colours come to donate a pint of blood and give it with a gallon of love.

Every week, down the road on Standing Way, University Hospital Milton Keynes uses one hundred and fifteen pints of blood to care for its patients. During that year of pandemic, 2022, Prime Minister Boris Johnson made a number of visits to our hospital. Why chose Milton Keynes Hospital and not somewhere closer two Downing Street ? Because while its official title is University Hospital Milton Keynes in truth it is Amazing, University, Wonderful, Beautiful, Loving, Caring Hospital Milton Keynes and unique within our NHS.

During the frightening days of 2020 people stood on their doorsteps and clapped for our NHS, posters loving key workers appeared everywhere, supermarkets offered discounts for nurses shopping within their isles. We can now see how shallow all that was, with the NHS in crisis where is the real love we need to be giving ? The wave of love flows in both directions, can we in this New Year all  please grab our surfboards and ride that wave.

Not a new year but September 1971, shortly after I came to live in the then infant New City of Milton Keynes we first year trainee teachers were taken by bus to Oxford of whose university our college was a satellite, for Freshers Day. During that day we were given some words which we all took away firmly implanted in our hearts.

DESIDERATA by Max Ehrman

GO PLACIDLY amid the noise and the haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence. As far as possible, without surrender, be on good terms with all persons.

Speak your truth quietly and clearly; and listen to others, even to the dull and the ignorant; they too have their story.

Avoid loud and aggressive persons; they are vexatious to the spirit. If you compare yourself with others, you may become vain or bitter, for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself.

Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans. Keep interested in your own career, however humble; it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time.

Exercise caution in your business affairs, for the world is full of trickery. But let this not blind you to what virtue there is; many persons strive for high ideals, and everywhere life is full of

heroism.

Be yourself. Especially do not feign affection. Neither be cynical about love; for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment, it is as perennial as the grass.

Take kindly the counsel of the years, gracefully surrendering the things of youth.

Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune. But do not distress yourself with dark imaginings. Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness.

Beyond a wholesome discipline, be gentle with yourself. You are a child of the universe no less than the trees and the stars; you have a right to be here.

And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should. Therefore be at peace with God, whatever you conceive Him to be. And whatever your labours and aspirations, in the noisy confusion of life, keep peace in your soul. With all its sham, drudgery and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world. Be cheerful. Strive to be happy.

Desiderata is Latin for DESIRED THINGS.  Those words have been central to my life since that day way back in September 1971 when as a twenty year old youth they were given to me. It is actually written in my will that they should be read at my funeral.

When someone writes something, a book or a poem it becomes copyright for seventy years after their death. Max Ehrman renounced all  rights, he wanted as many people as possible to take his desired things, share them and make them central to as many lives as possible.

There are two phrases within this beautiful poem which I often extract and quote to people I meet.

You are a child of the universe no less than the trees and the stars; you have a right to be here.

and

With all its sham, drudgery and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world. Be cheerful. Strive to be happy.

As you make your New Year Resolution for 2023 take those words, place them in your heart and look for what you consider to be the most beautiful place in the City of Milton Keynes both literally as seen from the heart and metaphorically from the heart.

My book MILTON KEYNES THE CITY OF LEGEND is now available on Amazon.

For EVERY copy sold a donation will be made to University Hospital Milton Keynes to help care for children sick in its wards, send love to their parents and thank our NHS staff who are caring for them. Royalties will then be used to send SMILE cards to NHS staff, their patients and to parents who have a child sick in hospital in eleven different locations around the world.

200,000 words within which I look at our City’s legend and  heritage from my point of view then invite you to add your view to celebrate the phrase: WOULDN’T IT BE NICE IF ALL CITIES WERE LIKE MILTON KEYNES.

Speak again next week. SATURDAY 7th January next year.