And it came to pass that our car died and we had to spend a while without personal motorised transport in the land of Milton Keynes. Miklton Keynes is a new city and as such has been designed, amongst other things, to be car friendly. Unfortunately this has meant that public transport, specifically, the buses, seems more of an after thought.

Take a simple trip to Milton Keynes central from one of the surrounding small towns/ conurbations/ districts*, just like we did. Get on the wrong (but still right bus) and a trip of 10/15 minutes becomes an adventure of almost an hour as the bus winds its way through seemingly undiscovered tribes of urban citizens [I believe the word chav is often used as a description]. And why would you get on the wrong (but still right bus)? Because you ask the wonderful driver whether the bus goes somewhere, and the answer is more vague than the safety instructions for swimming with Stingrays.

Having spent some time in the centre of Milton Keynes, and discovering the right (correct this time) bus to journey home, you meet the other sort of bus driver that has been bred in MK. Rather than the vagueness expressed in the first leg of our journey, we now experience the brash ‘I rule the road’ attitude, that is normally associated with taxi drivers or owners of BMWs. At times, despite being surrounded by several tons of metal I felt no safer than negotiating the M25 in a Sinclair C5 (see pic), and I now fear the day I get back in a car and have to share the road with someone like this. I shall be constantly looking out for this rogue driver who seems hell bent on taking others there.

After the above episode, I decided to stay in this weekend.

*delete as and if bothered