Mercenaries (Ready For War)

As I'm sure any regular reader will have established, I live in Milton Keynes, a new city in North Buckinghamshire generally described in disparaging terms and often to be heard in conversation alongside roundabouts and the famous concrete black and white cows created by Liz Leyh that live in a field just outside the City centre.

What happens to be one of my favourite films, the über-sentimental Brit flick Love Actually includes a scene where Colin Firth is learning Portuguese in a language school. He and his colleagues are reciting various sentences whilst wearing headphones, whereupon one student says 'Milton Keynes has lots of roundabouts'. At first you laugh, and then you feel embarrassed. Despite some incredible facilities, Milton Keynes is something of a laughing stock. 'Someone's got to,' is the usual response when you say you live in Milton Keynes.

The butt of jokes it may well be, but I'm laughing after seeing my house price rise over 25% in just over three years, for despite being looked down-upon, Milton Keynes is a property hot spot that appears to make a nonsense of the notions of supply and demand that were drummed into me while studying economics. Under John Prescott's chubby direction, Milton Keynes is expanding rapidly, new houses are being crammed into hitherto undeveloped areas of the City, and yet despite this huge creation of supply, demand remains unmet and prices continue to storm ahead.

We only came to live here because we couldn't afford to move farther south, even though that would make much more sense for my commute into London. I'm glad we did move here though, not least because when I say I live in Buckinghamshire it sounds quite posh, but most importantly because the facilities in Milton Keynes are top notch. You want shops? You have a massive shopping centre with all you major names plus higher end outlets from Jaegar, Boss, Karen Millen and now Austin Reed. Shops that you'd normally associate with London (such as Krispy Kreme or Pret) tend to branch out in MK after other major cities. You want leisure? You have gyms a plenty and the huge Xscape area with its indoor ski slope. You want to eat? Xscape again has loads of smart eateries, the Centre:MK has the likes of Wagamama and out of town there are two noted gastro pubs. You want culture? You've got a fantastic modern theatre and an art gallery specialising in offbeat contemporary and often installation-based art. You want somewhere peaceful to walk? You've got the Grand Union Canal toepath and three man-made but beautifully-landscaped lakes. You want good transport links? You've got the M1 about 5 minutes from the City centre and a train service into London that could be as quick as 30 minutes, and you can get to London Luton or Birmingham International in next to no time. You want a spirit of modern enterprise? You've got businesses like Easy Group or Domino's that will try new products and ideas in Milton Keynes before rolling them out elsewhere. You want offices? You've got modern office space with good light and facilities at a fraction of the rent per square foot of London.

In short, you've got everything you could possibly need in Milton Keynes, plus you can get to the villages or countryside, or historic towns like Buckingham and Woburn in no time.

However, I think the people in Milton Keynes are among the most mercenary individuals I've ever come across. Much more so than London, much more so in fact than the Spanish guys who've come over to work at Abbey's HQ since Santander took them over. People are always in a hurry, everyone's rude, no-one will hold a door open for you (even with a buggy), people spend their money like it's going out of fashion (especially on cars – the drivers of those Porsches and Maseratis think it must be Chelsea, I swear) and no-one gives two hoots about anyone else.

I think I may know the reason. Notwithstanding the fact that lots of people have made a lot of money from their houses, which has given residents huge spending power, the main reason lies in the construction of the City itself.

To illustrate this, I shall use an example. Terry Pratchett (of Discworld fame) and Neil Gaiman (of comic book fame) once collaborated on a book together in which a theory of why the M25 was so hellish was proposed - if I remember correctly, one of the Devil's staff moved the markings for the London Orbital so that it was formed in the shape of an occult symbol, thus ensuring users would be subjected to nightmarish journeys because of the powerful black energy coursing around the motorway.

Now, I'm not suggesting that the planners of Milton Keynes' visionary new town project were working in legion with the underworld, because the basic premise of Milton Keynes - built as it is as a series of interconnected grids - is sublime. Take New York as the best example of a city built as grid. So long as you know your east from west, so long as you know that your avenues run from north to south and your streets run east to west; so long as you know this you can't get lost. Now it's hard, I admit, to compare a small City in Buckinghamshire with NYC, but in many respects the premise should be easier in MK - east to west roads are marked by Hs, north to south roads are marked by Vs - horizontal and vertical. Non-residents find it so confusing, but it's so easy. I maintain that if you were tasked with building a new city today, you'd do it in a grid. It makes so much sense.

However, it does have a downside, which is where the mercenary spirit has evolved from. Milton Keynes was built for car users first and foremost. Public transport is worse here than anywhere I've ever lived before and if you don't have a car your life is going to be pretty hellish here. Most of the H and V artery roads are dual carriageways, and carry a 70mph speed limit or 60 in the case of single-lane roads. This obliges people to drive fast, which has instilled an unwelcome culture of needing to get from A to B in the quickest possible time, which then spills over to create the rudeness and selfishness that is endemic in this city. The fact that signalling left or right, or parking straight in a space at a car park is beyond the grasp of these drivers is neither here nor there. This city is thus built on very 1980s Thatcherite foundations of speed, greed and wealth where all semblance of community spirit has been replaced by one of chronic individualism.

A few months ago I witnessed one of the worst acts of bloody-mindedness that I've ever seen in this city. Alighting from the train I joined the jostling throng of people climbing the steps up to street level. This is always my least favourite part of my commute, just because it reminds me of how totally self-important Milton Keynes commuters are. Amid the clamour to get up the stairs before anyone else, people push - sometimes discretely using a bag, sometimes more obviously using elbows - to get themselves ahead of their fellow commuters. Eventually you are corralled into two columns, two people abreast. But pity anyone needing to get down the stairs to the train you've just departed. My fellow commuters wouldn't dream of making it easy for them, and so I wonder how many people have had to ring a loved one from the station to explain that they would be late because no-one would let them down the stairs?On this one occasion, someone trying to get down the stairs proved himself to be every bit as mercenary as those coming up. Rather than edging his way down the steps one by one hoping that the twin columns would break slightly for him to get down a step or two more, he took it upon himself to charge down the stairs, violently knocking one woman out of the way in the process. He didn't turn around to apologise even though she had been clearly hurt and shook up by his shoving; as long as he was on that train he was fine, others’ feelings didn't matter. The clear symbolism of this self-centredness is obvious to me.

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At the weekend Michelle and I had our first barbecue of 2006. It was a clear, still day, but as soon as the coals were lit the wind picked up and smoke billowed in random directions, including over the fence into my neighbours' garden, where the washing had just been pegged out and the windows were open. It was an accident - I couldn't control the wind, nor should I necessarily have popped around to their house to inform them in advance of my intention to cook up some burgers. But the lady of the house next door, who must be pushing fifty, was sufficiently unimpressed to mutter to herself angrily over the fence as she gathered up her washing in a huff and slammed all the windows shut and then stuck on the radio at stadium volumes, thus waking our baby and giving us an afternoon’s worth of Robbie Williams, Kaiser Chiefs and other chart-bothering acts. All for two burgers and a bit of harmless smoke. Such is the selfishness of the residents of Milton Keynes.