February Funfair

One thing I wasn't expecting to see last weekend was a funfair. The bonfire fairs typically mark the end of the season so most showmen return to their yards for winter during November and apart from a few small Christmas and New Year events don't go on the road again until mid to late February or sometimes March. The Kings Lynn Mart is the traditional season-starter and that didn't open until Valentine's Day, by which time this fair in Milton Keynes had been there for a week, so it is very early in the season for them to be open for business.

It was quite wet. This was as close as I could get to Denzil Danter's Volvo because of that massive puddle

BL Autumn Rally report

Last Sunday (25th September) saw the fourth annual BL Autumn Rally, billed as a celebration of British Leyland's unsung heroes and held at Milton Keynes Museum. We had never been before but as we now own a qualifying car and live just a short distance from the venue it would have been rude not to attend. The show is principally made up of the owners' clubs for the Allegro, Maxi, Landcrab, Metro, Maestro/Montego, Vanden Plas, and new for this year, the Marina and the Rover 200/400 series, plus an open class for all other BMC, BL and Austin-Rover cars. Despite being fairly poorly publicised outside of BL club circles and not even mentioned on the museum website, almost a hundred vehicles were in attendance and it was an enjoyable day out.

Isn't Tara Green a great colour? It even makes the Vanden Plas Allegro look good.

The man in the silver Rover

A strange encounter at the fair

 

The bonfire fair at Campbell Park in Milton Keynes came to a close on Sunday, and as is traditional I paid a visit yesterday to watch the showmen pull down their equipment and depart from the ground. There is a culture of mutual respect between showmen and funfair enthusiasts so the latter are to be expected and are generally welcomed as long as they don't cause trouble. The enthusiast community is very small and tight-knit so we are often known to each other and to many showmen, but I had a rather strange encounter yesterday with someone I had never seen before who didn't really seem to have a genuine reason to be there and was basically being a nuisance: the mysterious man in the silver Rover. Who was he and what was he doing there?

Unlucky 13 - the M1 junction's weirdness explained

As a frequent traveller to Bedford via Milton Keynes and the A421, I have often wondered why this road suddenly and inconveniently veers south-east and travels alongside the M1 motorway for a couple of miles before meeting it at junction 13, and then goes north again on the other side, adding several unnecessary miles to the journey. Having discovered that junction 13 itself in its original form featured in road enthusiasts' website CBRD's list of bad junctions, piecing together the various reader comments solved the mystery of the bigger picture and why the entire road layout in that area is a bit strange, so here is the explanation.

Why does the A421 go down to the motorway junction and back up the other side? Read on to find out...

An architectural marvel? Surely not...

Following neatly on from the sad story of The Point, I have recently discovered that not only is the Milton Keynes shopping centre a listed building but the same honour has more recently been bestowed upon another site of even more dubious merit, which has left me quite frankly flabbergasted. Who would believe the city centre's old bus station has Grade II Listed status?

What's The Point?

A requiem for Britain's first multiplex cinema

 

An iconic local landmark that played an important role in my childhood has just closed after less than 30 years and is scheduled for demolition, so as yet another part of our heritage bites the dust I take a fond look back at The Point, the UK's first multiplex cinema. I'm sure I am not alone in having so many fond memories of that place: countless cinema trips, often to see the latest Roald Dahl or Disney animation, were part of the routine when I was young, sometimes with a group of friends as a birthday treat, sometimes just as a family outing, and the sight of that big red neon pyramid glowing against the night sky always filled me with excitement. Although I haven't set foot inside for years I can still vividly recall it: the wide staircase leading down from the entrance to the foyer with its central box office, the smell of popcorn, the illuminated signs above the auditorium doors spelling out the names of what seemed like exotic films I was far too young to watch, and the red tip-up seats.

The Point opened a couple of months after I was born so it has always been there on my many trips to Milton Keynes, a reassuring presence in this ever-changing city and one of the last links with a childhood long gone. It is such an unmistakable icon and one of the first things to be seen when getting off a bus in the city centre that it has become a familiar and accepted part of the landscape and things just won't be the same without it, although it has been very sad to watch its decline in recent years.