Thursday 16 February 2012

Scott of Milton Keynes

Scott would never make it to Milton Keynes.
Sir Edmund Hillary conquered Everest and the planet’s last remaining unchartered territories at the Poles. All that was left to explore, in fact, except for one location – Milton Keynes. Milton Keynes eluded Hillary mostly because it didn’t exist until 1967, long after he had hung up his parka. Hillary had grown up with fantastical stories of far-away, mythical, unattainable places like the gold-haemorrhaging El Dorado and Utopian Shangri-La. Similarly, he could but dream of the multi-storey car parks, the ease of road navigation on Milton Keynes’ grid system and the mini-roundabouts. These were exotic, futuristic town-planning schemes. (CLICK ON 'Read more' LINK, BELOW)

Captain Scott never made it either. He would have to settle for the title, ‘Scott of the Antarctic’. ‘Scott of Milton Keynes’ was never to be. Had he been around in the late 60s, he might have found a North West passage through Melton Mowbray, avoiding the contra-flow system on the A32, by taking the B408 just before the Lower Wallop turn off. But of course – as it was at the South Pole – there would always be a threat that the Norwegians would get there first.

Milton Keynes.

Scott was criticised for his use of dogs on his famous expedition. Could he be trusted to make the correct canine decisions tackling the Midlands city? Huskies would have been inappropriate company. Surely, poodles would be more fashionable in what he would hope to find? – a sophisticated, chic, urban environment.
Deciding to eat their last rations of reconstituted lamb, Titus Oates would have purposed to both lift the men’s spirits and a meat dish by venturing out to see if he could source a complementary herb; his last words: ‘I may buy some thyme.’

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