MK Today - Saturday 18th February 2023

What is the collective noun for a group of cathedrals ? Can such be found within the Oxford University’s Dictionary of the English Language ?  NO, but within the Open University’s Dictionary of the English Language the collective noun for a group of cathedrals is MILTON KEYNES.

When His Majesty King Charles III visited our city on Thursday 16^th February 2023 it is of note his reception was held at Christ The Cornerstone and not within the hideous carbuncle on the face of a much loved friend as given to our city centre by Milton Keynes Cowboy Council !

His Majesty, defender of faith rather than one single faith.

Christ The Cornerstone was the first purpose built ecumenical church in the country. Unlike its ugly neighbours up the road this is a place of architectural beauty and a beauty which embraces faith, not religion – faith it a very

wide  sense. I attend this special location for my blood donor sessions. Every Thursday it hosts NHS Blood Donations. Faith not the faith. Yes, Christ The Cornerstone is the very first purpose built ecumenical church in England.

Also within Milton Keynes can be found our beautiful Peace Pagoda, the very first such monument of faith to be built in the Western World. Did you know that the hill upon which it stands is entirely man-made ? I remember watching lorry load after lorry load of soil being driven and tipped onto the flat farmland to build the home on which

Milton Keynes Pagoda of Peace was to be built. Every ounce of soil was transported to site escorted by Buddhist Monks tapping drums and praying.

This week’s edition of MK Today draws on the longer text within my book MiltonKeynes The City of Legend.

Saint Giles Church Tattenhoe, the present building dates back six hundred years but there was a church on the site before the cathedral we know today. Legend says that Thomas Becket, before he became Archbishop of Canterbury and murdered in his own cathedral visited, worshiped and preached at Tattenhoe.

By congregation numbers, possibly the biggest church in Milton Keynes is The Christian Centre on Oldbrook, did you know this is where the Milton Keynes Foodbank was started. Faith not the faith.

Then we have Amazing Grace, the world’s most artist recorded piece of music. From Elvis Presley The King of Rock and Roll to US President Barak Obama, from Andre Rieu to The Tabernacle Choir, Amazing Grace was given to the world by John Newton of Saint Peter and Saint Paul’s Church in Olney Milton Keynes.

Walton Church, now deconsecrated as a place of worship, is beautifully preserved within the campus of the Open University. Faith.

Some will tell you that a city must have a cathedral but that is not the case. Milton Keynes does not have such but it has a beautiful collection of places celebrating faith.

Do we need a collective noun for a group of cathedrals ?  Perhaps not when we have such a wonderful collection of faith as we have here in our City of Milton Keynes. I have here touched on but a small number. Go out and explore the rest for yourself.

MK Today - Wednesday 15th February 2023

All robots are stupid but some are more evil than others !

George Orwell, please forgive my adapting that line from your work Animal Farm.

Milton Keynes you have got a lot to answer for ! I am sure our City will want to assign blame to just one area – BLETCHLEY. Bletchley, you have got one heck of a lot to answer for. YOU gave the world robots !

Robots when I was a kid were fun friends from science fiction. Who remembers Fireball XL5 and its robot Robert ?  Can you remember his catch phrase ? On our way home… I wasn’t exactly a kid, I was eleven years old when this first screened but I loved this fun programme.

Where did you watch Star Wars ? Released in 1977 I watched the adventures of R2D2 and C3PO at the Electra in Newport Pagnell. 1977, that was six years before the invention of the internet.

Britain gave the world the Internet. Britain gave the world the computer, Bletchley gave the world the computer. America may like to think it invented the thinking machine but it was right here in Milton Keynes, in Bletchley Park that the brain for a robot was invented. Perhaps, given robots in 2023 we should deny all responsibility and let the Americans applaud their own lie.

Do you shop at Morrisons by any chance ? Morrisons robotic self check out. All robots are stupid but Morrissons are more stupid than most. Payment excepted ! DOH YOU THICK MORONIC ROBOT – excepted means thrown aside and not included ! You

mean Payment accepted !

When the end of World War Two came to an end and Alan Turing and his mates were able to put their hammers on the shelf, no more codes to break Winston Churchill ordered the Bletchley Park computers should be destroyed so enemies could not steal the knowledge. Winston, any chance you could come back and order the destruction of Microsoft ? Board up its windows and allow it to return to the job it does best manufacturing used recycled toilet paper.

Milton Keynes Development Corporation built a city of trees with the foundation stone that no building shall be taller that the surrounding trees. Cowboy planners in Milton Keynes Council

trashed that, I am sure if I started a robotic on-line petition thousand would sign demanding Central Milton Keynes should be demolished and turned into a new forest.

But even more hideous that the likes of the Hub and Xscape are the forest of phone masts obliterating our City. But start a petition against these and I doubt I would get a single person to sign !

Anywhere you go today count the number of people using a smart phone linked to these masts. Actually it would be easier to count those who are NOT using them. Dumbo smart phones are infinitely more addictive than any Class A drug !

Smart phones are compensatory aids. If you are hard of hearing you can wear a hearing aid.

If you eyesight is less than 20/20 you can nip along to Specsavers. If you break your leg and have it plastered the hospital will give you a crutch to compensate and help you walk. If you are thick and stupid with a brain lacking intelligence you can use a smart phone to compensate.

Smart phones are the handcuffs of the brain. They are robots in reverse. They take over the brain turning users into semi-intelligent robots.

What are these semi-intelligent users doing: Ordering on Amazon The Adventures of Billy

Wobblestick by William Shakespeare ? Listening to the coronation music of Edward the Confessor ?  Checking the precise height of the Empire State Building ? Making sure there is not going ti be a hurricane in the south-west corner of North Korea ? All while researching the precise date of King Henry VIII’s male menopause !

All robots (humans) are stupid but some (smart phones) are more evil than others !

Milton Keynes is proud (Why ?) of its Starship robots delivering Mars Bars and the odd packet of crisps. I wonder what a Dalek would say if it encountered one such mobile stupid robot !

EXTERMINATE perhaps.

I am going to step outside my generation for a moment (I was born in 1950). Back to my father’s generation (He was born in 1926) and to my son’s generation (He was born in 1980)

In the early 1970’s my father outsourced accounting from his work to a computer bank. When the print outs were returned he observed that in addition to the worker payslips he wanted pages and pages of additional information was supplied, information he did not need but having paid for the computer bank he felt obliged to use all of the information the robot had churned out.

What car do you drive ? My son drives a Tesla. Visiting over Christmas when he and his family were ready to leave he tapped an app on his stupid smart phone, told the car outside to start its engine and warm up the heating before they all got in and drove home.

Who drove home ? Was it my son or some stupid robot in control of the car. Generation, I wouldn’t even be a passenger in a Twittering Elton Musk Robot. I wonder if when it speaks it quotes the Fireball XL5 robot – ON OUR WAY HOME.

All this robotic nonsense, apps, smart phones, and so on all descend from Bletchley Park !

In my book MILTON KEYNES THE CITY OF LEGEND I speak of my attending a day tutorial at our Open University. There were representatives from different areas of our New City, I was representing education. The professor stood up and said: You may have heard of a new invention called the world wide web. I am going to teach you today to send letters using this new invention, I am going to teach you to send electronic mail.

We were charged to send an electronic letter to the person sitting next to us. Not a single delegate could make it work. I said: This will never catch on. All other delegates agreed.

Do you remember the film You’ve Got Mail. So dated it never appears on retro TV.

e-mail, ever time you send an e-mail you run the risk of it being clicked and deleted without ever being read. For every e-mail you send instead of a letter you are helping to put Postman Pat out of a job.

Alan Turing and Bletchley Park just look at what you did !

When you finished your day’s work did you use an app from your enigma hammer to pay for a pint at The Three Trees ?

I’ll now use a computer to post this on the World Wide Web and send electronic mail to tell everyone its there !

MK Today - Saturday 11th February 2023

With His Majesty King Charles III about to visit Milton Keynes to confirm and to celebrate our home being awarded a city charter may I share a couple of bits from my book MILTON KEYNES THE CITY OF LEGEND: 

School Assembly and Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II And The Visit That Never Was.

In the definition of the word these are perhaps not legends, there certainly is no myth about them as every word you are about to read actually happened.  If enough people now read about Milton Keynes Mayor Brian Baldry’s school assembly and the wave at the bottom of Leon School’s field then perhaps these event may be lifted into legend !

So let’s start, shall we, with School Assembly

What were school assemblies like when you were a kid ?  Were they as boring as they were

for me ?  Were they as boring as some of the assemblies I presided over at Leon School. Never mind which school you went to, never mind if morning assemblies were good, bad or ugly let me share memories of a very special time.

In 1981 Brian Baldry became the eighth Mayor of Milton Keynes.  He decided he wanted to come to Leon School where his son and daughter were students, he wanted to address the entire school and explain the Milton Keynes motto on the crest hanging from his mayoral chain:

BY KNOWLEDGE, DESIGN AND UNDERSTANDING

Headmaster David Bradshaw gave me the task of organising the visit and assembly. In 1981 I would have preferred he had dumped the major task on another member of staff but today I am so proud that I was the one who drew the short straw.

I had to pack one thousand two hundred students and staff into the sports hall, a tight fit. Mayor Brian then gave a brilliant talk totally captivating and inspiring the students, not to mention the staff. That was forty-two years ago and yet, such was its inspiration, I can remember it as if it was yesterday.

By Knowledge, Design and Understanding. Mayor Brian stood before the assembly, took the mayoral chain in his hands and explained in detail the motto of our New City.  He wanted every student and every member of staff at Leon School to be very clear that this was the at the heart of Milton Keynes and what the words meant.

Knowledge began with The Open University then spreading out to every single school in the New City. Design was the planning of Milton Keynes Development Corporation. Understanding was the way we would all come together to build Milton Keynes New City into a Milton Keynes a Great City. That is how Mayor Brian explained his chain of office. He inspired everyone at that assembly about the New City where we lived.

After the assembly Mayor Brian chatted with me about our infant City. We called Milton Keynes a City as it was being developed and everyone just assumed on completion it would be awarded a city charter. A few weeks after that assembly Mayor Brian was to host HM Queen Elizabeth II on a visit to Milton Keynes. Brian would meet her at Bletchley Railway Station, there was no Central Milton Keynes Station back then. He hoped that visit would lead to Milton Keynes being awarded city charter and shared his passion with me as we chatted. He so much wanted to be Lord Mayor of Milton Keynes.

Being a city does not automatically mean its mayor becomes a Lord Mayor. Birmingham has a Lord Mayor but Greater London does not. Milton Keynes is now a city but we do not have a lord for our mayor. The role of the mayor is above politics, It was in 1999, seven years after Mayor Baldry left office, that elected mayors started popping up. Boris Johnson was an elected mayor of London. I do so hope that Milton Keynes does not go down this path of folly.

Anyway………

Mayor Brian Baldry was a businessman, well he liked to think that he was. He owned a taxi company, a small haulage firm and Bletchley Coaches. The wheels on the bus go round and round, well sometimes on some of Brian's buses they did but not always did they do so.

Following the success of Mayor Brian's school assembly, he decided he would host a group of students at the new Milton Keynes Council offices. Brian sent one of his own coaches to the school to take us there.  I say us because again I drew the short straw and was put in charge. It may  have been a short straw forty odd years ago but today I am again so proud to have been given the task.

Driving the short distance from Leon School in the south of Milton Keynes to the civic offices in the city centre the engine of the coach began to overheat. By knowledge and a lot of understanding the driver managed to get it to the city centre and park up outside the council offices. He blagged an empty milk bottle from reception then kept running in and out with water to top up the radiator. It was my role to distract Mayor Baldry from what was happening. I smile now as I tell you the milk bottle which the driver was frantically using to fix the coach was from Taylor's Dairy, a dairy owned by a fellow council member and colleague of Mayor Brian, David Taylor who would later become Mayor of Milton Keynes.

BY KNOWLEDGE, DESIGN AND UNDERSTANDING 

Mayor Brian I am sure you were disappointed on not becoming Lord Mayor of Milton Keynes, I know how much you loved our New City. You left us many years ago but I am sure you are looking down from the mayor’s chamber in the sky with great pride now Her Majesty has granted Milton Keynes it’s well-deserved city charter.

Your visit to Leon School and your assembly has gone down as a legend. I wonder how many remember your speaking to us all in that packed sports hall. I wonder how many of your successors have donned their chain and visited our city schools to give a similar lecture. Not many if any I am guessing. Perhaps such a duty should form part of mayoral civic duties.

And now for….

Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II And The Visit That Never Was:

It was a weekday when Mayor Brian welcomed Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II to Milton Keynes, at the time Mr D B Bradshaw was Leon School headmaster. Leon is adjacent to the railway line along which the Queen and The Duke of Edinburgh would travel before reaching Bletchley and Mayor Baldry. We staff wanted to take our classes out onto the field to wave at the royal train. Headmaster Bradshaw did not think this was a justifiable reason to take the kids away from the Three R's.

 

Staff in the school office, however, were determined to change his mind. I think his secretary threatened to put a typo into every one of his letters until the end of term if Headmaster Bradshaw did not allow the entire school to wave at the royal train. A message was quickly sent round the classrooms, so we all decamped onto the field.

 

There we enthusiastically waved at all trains be they an express or a train scheduled to stop at every blade of grass. We waved at goods trains and we even waved at a bin lorry driving along Drayton Road. But we did not wave at the royal train. By the time Leon School was waving Her Majesty was long gone and the royal train was parked up in a siding at Bletchley Station, possibly the same one that had housed the Great Train Robbery’s Travelling Post Office. An abundance of egg was left on an abundance of Leon School faces !

 

After school and joking about the royal wave that never was, I was driving along Saxon Street behind The Brunel Centre in Bletchley when a black car approached then passed me by on the other side of the road. There she was sitting in the back seat, Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II. Perhaps as her train slowed towards Bletchley Station she saw the school, Leon School, on her right. Perhaps she wondered why there were no kids there waving to greet her. Perhaps.

Your Majesty King Charles III I am sure we are all looking forward to you visit to the City of Milton Keynes on Thursday 16^th February 2023. I will myself be attending a blood donor session but I promise while laying back on the donation bed that I will wave !

MK Today - Wednesday 8th February 2023

Could Milton Keynes be considered to be a City of Literature ?

My first reaction to such a question is to say No, it couldn’t. But let me explore a little more deeply.

Who is the most celebrated writer to be associated with Milton Keynes ? Well it aint me so we won’t go there !

I have often wondered in Lady Fanny Leon of Bletchley Park which was her home between 1883 and 1936 kept a diary. It’s the sort of thing she would have done but if she did I wonder what happened to it.

Ernest Cook, Headmaster of Bletchley Road School which later became Leon School kept a school log book, perhaps an alterative term for diary, in which he meticulously recorded the day to day activities of staff and pupils at Bletchley Road. I read page after page of his writing and shared such with my students when I worked at Leon.

This is a passage from Milton Keynes The City Of Legend where I have copied some of Headmaster Cook’s wartime entries.

October the 14th 1940 Air Raid Warning 10:50 AM   All Clear 11:10 AM  Air Raid Warning 11:20 AM   All Clear 11:30 PM  Air Raid Warning 12:35 PM  All Clear 2:05 PM

November the 6th 1940  Air Raid Warning 11:10 AM  All Clear 11:25 AM   Air Raid Warning 2:20 PM   All Clear 3:25 PM

January the 21st 1941 Air Raid Warning 10.23 AM   All Clear 10:47 AM   Air Raid  Warning 11:37 AM   All Clear 12:20 PM   Air Raid Warning 1:43 PM   All Clear 2:08 PM    Air Raid Warning 3:35 PM   All Clear 4:15 PM

And….

September 22nd1939 school reopened owing to the presence of two official evacuated schools from London. The Bletchley Senior School is meeting only from 9:00 AM to 12:30 PM 

September the 27th 1939 Mr J Haynes Assistant Secretary for Education visited the school. A conference was held between the heads of the Bletchley Schools and the evacuated London School to discuss the many problems arising from working in double sessions.

And edited by Your Truly for a chapter in Milton Keynes The City Of Legend:

The school cancelled its sports day scheduled for May 31st in fear for the worsening situation at Dunkirk. It must have been a terrible time as Britain prepared, after the fall of France, to stand alone.

On 12th June the Education Committee ordered the school be officially closed until further notice to facilitate additional preparations to receive more evacuees. But all the teachers continued to work with children attending on a voluntary basis. No less than 94% attendance is recorded for that week but very few classes were held. Instead to support of the government's dig for victory campaign every spare space within the school grounds was dug up and prepared for cultivation.

The headmaster recorded in the log book for the 17^th June 1940: Received circular letter 483/1940 this states that children should be encouraged to attend school as usual but the registers would not be marked.  The response from the children was very good. The normal timetable was worked as far as possible with exception that extra time was devoted to the gardens.

Harold Hepworth and the now legendary articles he wrote for the Bletchley and District Gazette are so often all these years later are frequently shared on social media.

In writing MK Today I am taking inspiration from Harold Hepworth, perhaps one day I will be able to match his high standard of journalism. Sadly neither Bletchley and its District nor anywhere in Milton Keynes has a publication of the quality Mr Hepworth wrote for.

Back to Bletchley Park but not to the days of Lady Leon, come with me to 1974 when Dennis Hamley was a tutor at the teacher training college located in the park and I was a student. Dennis Hamley is now a widely read author of books for children. No longer living in our City but when he did his home was on Walley Drive, Bletchley. Dennis Hamley tried hard to encourage me to write stories for children.

Who was the Chairman of Milton Keynes Development Corporation ?  Don’t you dare tell me you do not know !

John Jock Middleton Campbell, Baron Campbell of Eskan was born in 1912. In the early

stages of his career he took control of his family’s sugar estates, in Guyana. He became chairman of the company, Booker Brothers, McConnell and Co. in 1952. He was Chairman of Milton Keynes Development Corporation. NO, he didn’t keep a diary during his chairmanship.

Booker Brothers. McConnell and Co. The Booker Prize is a literary prize awarded each year for the best novel written in English and published in the United Kingdom or Ireland.  The Booker Prize was first awarded in 1969, two years after the founding of Milton Keynes.

Tom Maschler and Graham C Green came up with the idea for the prize and found backing from Booker McConnell. Ian Fleming of James Bond fame was a good friend of Booker and Milton Keynes Development Corporation Chairman Jock Campbell. Fleming died in 1964. Before his friend died, Campbell established an authors division within Booker McConnell and bought a 51% share in the profits of Fleming’s books. The Booker Author Division would go on to acquire rights of Agatha Christie, Georgette Heyer, Harold Pinter and others.

Amazon began life as a book seller and publisher. My first book was published in 1992 and in September 1997 Amazon accepted me to its author’s list, My first published work was  The Story Of A Teenage Entrepreneur (FAILED). Did you know that Amazon sub-contracted the printing of books in its early UK days to a factory in Milton Keynes. I now have more than 120 books, e-books, short stories and essays published by Amazon.

In posing my opening question: Could Milton Keynes be considered to be a City of Literature ? I am including fiction, no-fiction and all genre where words are placed in a order to share thoughts from the writer.

I like to write fiction but as you know I have a passion for writing about Milton Keynes. Within such my mentor is Frank Markham and I am so proud to have met this incredible man when I was a teacher trainee student in Bletchley Park. His twin volume work published in the early 1970’s THE HISTORY OF MILTON KEYNES AND DISTRICT is compulsive reading. It took him more than twenty years to write.

Over decades I have said that no person should be allowed to serve on Milton Keynes Council without having read cover to cover Sir Frank Markham’s work. However, given the universal failure of Milton Keynes councillors to respond to letters and e-mails sent to them I do wonder if any of them can actually read or write !

Within MILTON KEYNES THE CITY OF LEGEND I suggest that Stony Stratford Library should be renamed The Frank Markham Library. Frank was a Stony Stratford man. I wrote to the library, I wrote to Stony Stratford Town Council, I wrote to the Member of Parliament for Stony Stratford. Did any of them reply ? DID THEY HECK !

If you take a song and remove the words you are in many cases left with an amazing piece of literature. I use the word amazing with purpose.  Which is the song that has been recorded by more other artists than any other ? AMAZING GRACE written by John Newton in Olney Milton Keynes. Elvis Presley The King of Rock and Roll recorded a truly beautiful version with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra as his backing group. Go to YouTube and you will find US president Barack Obama singing these Milton Keynes words.

Agatha Christie is the world’s best selling writer of all time. Tentative it may be but Jock Campbell linked her writing to Milton Keynes.

Within my writing I sometimes dream plots and characters, a few weeks ago I had a very

strange dream. No make that a crazy dream where my little grey cells slumbered well into excess.

In August 2022 I held a garden party where I gave away copies of my books to guests in exchange for donations to the childrens’ department at University Hospital Milton Keyes. It was a great success raising £330. I am not planning a similar event this year, 2023, but in my dream I did. I will now share my dream as the world’s best - selling author of all time came to Milton Keynes.

So let me set the scene. A beautiful summer’s day, birds are singing and the sun is shining through the trees. I am sitting on a garden bench when a lady I thought but was not sure I recognised came and sat beside me.

ME: Hello, welcome. Welcome to the garden party.

GUEST: So you are a writer Max ?

ME; Yes, Max is my pen name. My real name is David but my friends call me Dave.

GUEST: My husband’s name is Max and my name is Agatha.

ME; Agatha Christie ? Surely not, I thought I recognised you, what are you doing here in Milton Keynes ?

AGATHA: It was Milton Keynes that brought me here, I want to talk to you about your book Milton Keynes The City Of Legend.

ME: Oh ! You’ve read  it ?

AGATHA: I have David. (Emphasis on David and not Dave.)

ME: So the world’s best-selling author has read a book from the world’s lowest-selling writer. You were the one who bought it on Amazon. That’s all a bit embarrassing.

Somehow I do not think I will be finishing that piece of rubbish and adding it to my Amazon Bookshelf !

How many books has Agatha Christie sold ? In excess of two billion. Will anyone one day overtake that number. Well it won’t be me but wouldn’t it be nice if in one of our City’s school there is a young man or lady who will.

MK Today - 4th February 2023

Dirty Old Town – Dirty New City – Scruffy City

Dirty Old Town – Dirty New City. That was the very first piece of writing I had published about Milton Keynes. It was something The Bletchley and District Gazette elaborated from something I submitted to its letter page. The Bletchley and District Gazette, what an iconic newspaper that was back in the mid 1970’s when I penned a comparison of living on a mud filled building site, as Milton Keynes was, with the song Dirty Old Town. It was very tongue in cheek, you could not build the biggest project our country had seen in the sterile conditions of an operating theatre. You can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs, you can’t build a city without creating mud.

It now forms the opening chapter in my book MILTONKEYNES THE CITY OF LEGEND.

I want you to do something. I want you to step outside your home, how far do you have to walk before encounter a piece of litter ?

Milton Keynes today is a Scruffy City !

Right across our city, parish councils have placed and dutifully maintain litter bins, they are doing their bit. Sadly far too many ignorant residents are not doing their bit by using them. It is not the council, parish or city’s responsibility to pick up litter it is the duty of its criminal citizens not to drop litter.

Milton Keynes has a recycling programme we can be proud of but it is not the council’s responsibility to pick up litter and enter it into the recycling system.

YES, dropping litter is a crime ! Conviction in a magistrate’s court can result in a fine of up to £2,500 but when did the Scruffy City of Milton Keynes last impose such a fine from its court on Silbury Boulevard ?

Fly posting is also a criminal offence. Where an offence is proven the contravener shall be liable on summary conviction to a fine, currently not exceeding £1,000  and, in the case of a continuing offence, £100 for each day during which the offence remains after conviction.

This particular Roofing Services fly posting, along with many others, has been in place for way beyond a year. As I understand the matter this IS the responsibility of Milton Keynes City Council to act.

I sent a draft copy of this edition to Milton Keynes Councillor Adam Rolfe who is my ward councillor and for West Bletchley where this fly post can be found.  I asked for his comment to include here. HE FAILED TO REPLY !

I also invited Iain Stewart Member of Parliament to comment and give his wider point of view on Milton Keynes – The Scruffy City, The City of Litter. HE FAILED TO REPLY !

Politicians, the litter of society ?

I am not a goodie-goodie but can honestly say I have never dropped litter at any time within my long life. I just was not brought up that way. Not dropping litter does not make one a goodie-goodie, such is simply being a responsible member of society. Dropping litter makes one a BADDY-BADDY !

LITTER ! A recent event has made the irresponsible dropping of such very personal to me.

On Thursday 8^th December 2022 litter within Scruffy Milton Keynes became very personal to me.

Walking across Morrisons car park at Westcroft I inadvertently placed one foot inside a loop of plastic packaging in the click and collect area. Without realising this had happened I placed my other foot on the loop and fell flat on my face. I broke my nose, bruised my face, sprained my left hand and left knee, bruised the ribs on the left side of my body and broke my right arm. I had an operation to put a plate in my arm and needed extended support and physiotherapy in order to get better.

I am NOT here seeking sympathy, not never no way, but I am asking for contempt be directed to all disrespectful people who would have Milton Keynes become the SCRUFFY CITY !

My injuries were extensive but minor. I doubt the costs to our NHS in its present over-stretched situation were minor !

I received only the finest care from University Hospital Milton Keynes. Attending A & E I did not experience a long waiting time. Three doctors worked on my broken arm, pulling the bones into place before wrapping them into a plaster cast. The following Sunday – YES SUNDAY – I received an operation to place a metal plate in my arms. Surgeons working on a Sunday were not doing overtime, they were doing what every front-line NHS worker does – they were going the extra mile to care with love for their patients. Then received and am still receiving weekly physiotherapy sessions.

What is my treatment costing in money ? I don’t know, does anybody know ? What I do know is the idiot litter bug who caused my accident added the financial burden to our overstretched NHS.

Dirty Old Town – Dirty New City – Milton Keynes The Scruffy City – The City Of Litter - Politicians, the litter of society 

ENOUGH !  STOP IT ! MILTON KEYNES DESERVES BETTER !

Given the interest in these weekly features I am going rto make them twice weekly, Saturday and Wednesday. Next Wednesday MK Writers. Watch this space.

TIME TO RESCUE A LEGEND

MK Today – Time to recue a legend from the cruel and failing hands of Milton Keynes Council !

Following on from my publishing Milton Keynes The City of Legend I began the New Year with a weekly on-line social media celebration of our City’s legends MK Today.

I was going to share something later in the Spring about the demise of Leon Dinosaur at the hands of Milton Keynes Council but following people contacting me I am here advancing such publication.

PLEASE – we must not allow our iconic dinosaur to be hit by asteroids by Milton Keynes Council.

This is the entire chapter from my book. PLEASE read what I am trting to say and reverse the negligent destruction of Milton Keynes Council.

As I write this chapter I am very nervous and fearful of failure. As I will explain the mission I want to invite you to join me on has failure on its horizon, that horizon has a meteorites within its darkness.

Milton Keynes has been hit by a meteorite ! It was the twin brother of the inter-stellar missile

that caused the extinction of the dinosaurs six hundred and fifty million years ago.

Can we rescue the once iconic Leon Dinosaur from extinction ?

Let me tell you his story in some mini chapters:

Jurassic Classic – words from Not The Concrete Cows

How Leonasaurus Rex Was Born

Negligence And Failure

21^st November 2021

November 2022

2023 And A Space To Watch

Jurassic Classic:

Steven Speilberg - Jurassic Park ? Forget it. Crowds flocking to cinema screens up and down the country, media hype, marketing bandwagons covering everything from tee shirts to birthday cakes. Anyone would think that Mr Speilberg and Universal Studios invented the species. Well the silver screen mogul is very much mistaken, Milton Keynes has had its own Jurassic Classic for years.

Every British Rail passenger travelling up and down the main line through Bletchloey could be forgiven for thinking themselves victims of a time warp. Either that or perhaps they wonder if the eighty thirty-two out of Euston has taken a wrong turning and ended up in Hollywood California. For there, snarling at all and towering thirty feet above its surroundings is a life size Tyrannosaurus !  Our very own Leonasaurus Rex.

But this specimen is, for the most part, friendly and being constructed out of reinforced concrete not likely to terrorise anyone. Living at the bottom of Leon School's playing field this particular dinosaur was built under the direction of local artist Bill Billings. During the spring and summer of 1991 Bill and a team of Leon students dug out foundations and erected a steel frame support before casting the beast in concrete.

Although Central Television showed an initial interest in the statue it has entered the landmark scene of Milton Keynes and been taken so much for granted it is anything but forgotten. But T Rex is not the only one of Bill Billings Jurassic creations to roam the city. A few miles along Marlborough Street, at Peartree Bridge, is Triceratops again sculptured in concrete and this particular dinosaur came to live in Milton Keynes fifteen years ago.

Standing in the grounds of the Interaction project at The Old Rectory, Peartree Bridge, this dinosaur has been featured in a Bon Jovi video and was, for a time, the subject of the most popular selling post card of Milton Keynes. Unfortunately the trees along the V8 have matured now to the point where the sculpture can no longer be seen from the road. But next time you are in the area turn off towards Waterside and admire this particular landmark.

So Mr Speilberg you may have become a legend in your own time but so, in Milton Keynes, has Bill Billings. Then when your Jurassic Park is consigned to the discount shelves of the video stores then repeated every Boxing Day on our televisions Bill's creations will still be in their youth. And who knows Bill may have another Jurassic Classic in mind to graze on the planes of our city !

The original text from my 1994 book Not The Concrete Cows. Now, all these years later, what are your memories of Leonasaurus Rex ?

How Leonasaurus Rex Was Born:

During my time as Head of Year at Leon School I was privileged to serve under two different headmasters: Mr D B Bradshaw and Bruce Abbott, two very different characters but both amazing headmasters who loved their schools and gifted so much to their students. One day Bruce Abbott came into my office and said he wanted an iconic statue building on the school field, something which would raise the profile of the school. He then added: Dave Ashford I want you to make it happen !

Thank You Mr Abbott !

Abbott's original idea was to have a series of Easter Island Head style constructions running the entire length of the school field, all could be seen from passengers on trains heading into Milton Keynes. I thought that was a little ambitious and wanted to build on the developing legend surrounding the Peartree Bridge Dinosaur.

If the dinosaur were built in the bottom corner of the school field it would be clearly visible from the railway and be the first thing passengers saw on their way into the new city. I persuaded Headmaster Abbott to go along with Leon Dinosaur.

First thing I had to do was to make a planning application which was easily granted. I was interviewed by Central Television on the site where the dinosaur would stand but sadly the station did not engage as construction began.

With planning permission I persuaded Bill Billings, who had built the Peartree Dinosaur, to give us Leon Dinosaur. Within the chapter here in Milton Keynes The City of Legend celebrating Milton Keynes Worthies I have named Bill as one who gave Milton Keynes so much heritage.

In the early days of Milton Keynes, in the 1970's, lorry driver Brian Billings came from London to work on the building sites of the New City.

It was far, far more than houses Brian, better known as Bill, had a hand in building. In 1980 his

work was honoured with a degree from The Open University, itself a Milton Keynes icon and landmark. In 2000 he was awarded an MBE by HM Queen Elizabeth II. Sadly, Bill left us on Boxing Day 2007 but his work is a legend and will remain so for decades to come. However, unless we can rescue Leon Dinosaur as a matter of urgency this will be one area of Bill’s work forever destroyed.

Bill was not the concrete cows, not the originals anyway. These were three cows and three calves built by artist Liz Leyh in 1978.  It was The BBC's DJ and presenter Noel Edmunds who made the cows famous. He was forever making jokes saying how Milton Keynes was closing farms to build houses and factories so throwing out the real cows but replacing them with concrete cows to match the concrete fields !

Too fragile now to be left in the open those original cows are in a museum, but their replacement are indeed the work of Bill Billings.

Bill gave us a wonderful display near Wolverton a display which is itself a picture of heritage today.

Construction of our Leon Dinosaur was fun, big time and the teenagers were so excited and enthused by Bill. Bill did not so engage with many of my colleagues and certainly not the caretaking  team, I was constantly piggy in the middle and peace-maker. However, Headmaster Bruce's Abbott's dream came to fruition as did mine and Leonasaurus became a major Milton Keynes landmark.

The story does not stop there. Students who were involved in the building of the statue tell me a time capsule was buried at the site. I cannot say I have any recollection of this but clearly something happened

Bill did not construct another dinosaur, he went on to many other exciting projects but when Bruce Abbott retired dinosaurs took over the management of Leon School.

Negligence And Failure:

When the dinosaurs within the school’s later management decided it wanted to dismantle the statue there was public outcry among residents on the Lakes Estate. Sadly that did not stop the mental fossils from having their way as Leonasaurus was expelled from Leon School to a new home at The Warren Playground. There it stands today where it has been hit by an asteroid.

21st  November 2021:

Today I visited our dinosaur this morning and found him ill, TERMINALLY ILL and suffering from serious NEGLECT !

Leonasaurus is on his death bed.

First of all as I approached the iconic sculpture it looked to me as if he had been on a day trip to Bristol the world’s capital of scruffy graffiti !  Who ever thought this was an appropriate costume for Leonasaurus to wear !

If you visit the Peartree Bridge Dinosaur you will find a simple notice of heritage explaining this is the work of our late community artist Bill Billings. My thinking was to have something similar for Leonasaurus.

The dinosaur was Leon School Headmaster Bruce Abbott’s idea. He delegated it  to me to project manage. It was Bill Billings and the Leon Students of 1991/1992 who made it happen. I DO NOT want my name on any plaque but IDO WANT Bruce Abbott and Bill Billings to be acknowledged along with the Leonite students working within the project.

Leonasaurus is thirty years old but  unless something is done as a matter of urgency he will vanish completely from sight.

Not only is our dinosaur covered in this hideous graffiti which presumably somebody considers to be art but that art cannot cover up the crumbling exterior.

Yes I am angry and I hope my anger is coming out in these words !  I am angry that the work of Bruce Abbott, Bill Billings and Leonite Students is being treated with such disrespect. I  am angry that this yet again a failure on the part of Milton Keynes Council. Passionate as I am about our heritage, something I have been writing about for more than thirty years, I am angry that this icon of heritage is about to vanish from our community !

I shared those words from November 2021 on social media. The response was overwhelming save for one member of the local town council who attacked me on social media saying the dinosaur was part of a regeneration plan.  So great was my support on social media that Milton Keynes Citizen picked up on the situation and ran an article.

The person engaged by Milton Keynes Council to review the situation on Bletchley’s Lakes Estate within a regeneration programme contacted me and picked my brains. We were going to meet at the dinosaur but not for a few weeks. Those weeks have now become a year ! Publishing this book in January 2023 one year and three months.

November 2022:

November 2022 I returned to check on the health of our dinosaur. He is holding on but unless he is given urgent attention his life will soon be at its end.

I am hoping our dinosaur can hold on until this book is published.

2023 And A Space To Watch:

Firstly I want to use the publication of this book to launch a petition to remove Leonasaurus from the negligent care of Milton Keynes Council.

I would like to see him placed into the care of a small group of trustees. These trustees can take responsibility to organise the urgent surgery needed before moving our friend to a new home.

Where ?  Back to his original home at the bottom of Leon School field where Bill Billings and Leonite students constructed him. Back to where Headmaster Bruce Abbott wanted him to be the first thing passengers on trains from London heading into the New City of Milton Keynes would see. The responsibility of care for our dinosaur would remain in the care of the trustees and not be burdened onto the school.

Yes, this was my project but I was only the co-ordinator. It was Bruce Abbott’s idea and Bill Billing’s with Leonites who built our dinosaur. Both Bruce and Bill passed away some time ago. Responsibility falls on my shoulders to save this icon from the failing hands of Milton Keynes Council.

Am I not right in thinking NASA has developed the technology to fire a missile and divert the

course of incoming meteorites ?  Having been hit once by such meteorite could any future extinction be diverted to land on Milton Keynes Council ?

I said as I began to write this chapter that I am very nervous and fearful of failure. I am still very nervous and fearful of failure. How tragic it will be if that failure destroys Leonasaurus Rex.

I am hoping this special edition of MK Today will help save our dinosaur.

I AM NOT LOOKING TO MILTON KEYNES COUNCIL WHICH HAVE OVERSEEN THIS TRAGIC SITUATION.  

I am hoping that REAL people rescue this legend.