Page 34 - Phonebox Magazine September 2015

Through Rose Tinted Spectacles
A message from the Mayor
Well I am not sure if we have seen the summer for 2015 or there will be a heatwave once the schools have
gone back!
The number of requests for the Mayor’s attendance has lessened slightly with the summer holidays but the autumn is looking fully booked already. In recent weeks I have attended the formal opening of the new national headquarters of AYME – The Association of Young People with ME (or Chronic Fatigue Syndrome) in St John’s Street, having moved from the Tongwell employment area. They have been very well supported by a High Street Florist with some interesting window displays including a pair of Paloma Faith’s shoes!
I was an invited guest at the Milton Keynes Scouts AGM in Coffee Hall. The movement
which now has members of both sexes is going from strength to strength but as always is dependent on volunteer adult leaders to keep up with the demand. Six of their members were the next day flying to Japan for the World Scout Jamboree, a superb opportunity to meet many other young people from different countries, culture, and creeds. I speak from personal experience as a 15 year old going to the Rocky Mountains in Idaho, USA, before going to stay with a Mormon Scout’s family near Salt Lake City Utah.
The Milton Keynes Council Civic Service was held this year in Emberton the home village of the Mayor Cllr Keith McLean. The Parish church is a wonderful example of local architecture that has been very well maintained. Unfortunately the rain was ever present resulting in a change of plan for the Olney Brass band to play inside the church. This setting gave visiting dignitaries a very different impression of Milton Keynes, not a concrete cow in sight – only real ones! Milton Keynes Council have granted planning permission to allow the Middleton Pool car park to be extended and provide 38 new spaces; but we have to undertake landscaping works as a planning condition.
We have now submitted a comprehensive landscaping proposal from our consultant so hopefully we can now move forward. Membership of the new fitness centre continues to exceed marketing targets so if you are interested in joining I suggest that you do so without delay as the membership is moving rapidly towards the optimum number.
After months of hard work our Neighbourhood Plan has been formally deposited with Milton Keynes Council who will now check it prior to it being formally examined by a Planning Inspector.
Tesco have indicated that progress is being made on the sale of their Tickford Street site; so watch this space.
The cabling works for the Kickles Lane Solar farm is underway and materials are being delivered on site. The construction of the frames and panels is imminent. The developers have been working with the Town council on a range of community benefits resulting from this development.
If you have some spare time please come and visit the annual Horticultural & Craft Show on the 5th September 2015 at the United Reformed Church Hall off the High Street.
Ican recall the era of Dunkirk and The Battle of Britain because those were precisely the time when I was becoming socially aware. For four years my life had
revolved among Mum, Dad and baby brother (two more brothers arrived in due course), next door neighbours and a few visiting aunts and uncles. My earliest adventures were those of two little boys as Derek from just across the road and I explored our way on our tricycles and mapped out the neighbourhood for about five miles in most directions. Might any parent today dare allow small children such freedom to roam?
The nearest parade of shops was two miles away and mostly on the cycle track which bordered the Southend arterial road. Mother regularly sent me along with shopping bag on the handlebars and a list for the grocery store, home I duly returned with shopping and small change. Kids had spills as surely then as now but the nearest grown-up (for such we called adults) would simply pick me up, pop me back on my wheels and tell me to be more careful. The press today is 34 Phonebox Magazine
filled with the horrors of child abduction and worse; the simple truth of the times is that I was never then in any danger. Soon came the black out and the grown up world began to fall into our reckoning but triking in unlit streets was little more than just so much fun. Adults were soon bemoaning the lack of things we’d never heard and so did not miss. Of course we now know that bananas meant risk for the merchant navy, one family friend came home and gave account of being torpedoed.
As a child I was learning that the grown- ups’ world was none too nice. I lived to meet and enjoy bananas in 1947. Little by little this small child came to see something of the horror of war, the ugly destruction of bombed homes and displaced families. From my bedroom window I followed the activity of searchlights targeting Dornier bombers over the London docks just eight miles away and yes I saw one shot down close to my home; the following morning would find kids rummaging for shrapnel trophies, suddenly we reckoned to secure
Geoff Bacchus in 1937