nerd’s eye view

Issaquah on the Thames

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God help me, I hate the suburbs with a passion reserved for things like liver and George W. Bush. And here I am with Mindy - no fan of the burbs herself - in the middle of England’s proud experiment with suburbia, Milton Keynes.

I remember when MK was first started, an attempt at creating a livable, affordable, place to live and work outside of the outrageously overpriced London. Everyone made fun of MK and the Jam wrote a song about it that poked fun of the perfect happy life you’d get by moving to MK.

Mindy does seem perfectly happy in her cute little semi-detached home in a MK development, but she freely admits she’d never choose a community like this in the US. And of course, I’ve been happy to be here in the warm little house eating excellent home cooking and taking the train into town.

Yesterday was Sunday and Mindy has a day job, so we observed her day of rest by reading the Observer, eating a fancy brunch, and lying around doing nothing. At about two o’clock, I wrapped myself in windstop clothing and went for a wander. MK is criss-crossed with footpaths and bicycle trails. This is a great thing. Everything is really well marked and if you can keep the names in your head of the little burbs - Giffard Park, Newport Pagnell, Willan Lake… - you can easily find your way around.

The odd thing, though, is that no matter how easily it is to find your bearings, there’s not much too see and nowhere to go. There are a bunch of villages hidden here that have been swallowed up by the brick housing developments and big box industry, but I didn’t reach any of them. I saw two gas stations and a Quick-E-Mart type store and a fish and chip shop. There’s a pub that looks sort of like a TGI Friday’s - all new construction and giant parking lot. I saw a man-made lake and the VW European headquarters. I looked down to the left at the Volvo headquarters. That’s all I saw. It’s odd. It’s very American. You have to get in your car to get your groceries or go for dinner.

The villages do still exist, we ate dinner in one of them and went grocery shopping in another, but the space between them is filled with housing development and industry. There are loads of people living in these little compounds without services, cars parked in the driveway. It’s like Tucson or Redmond or Santa Clara. I vote no.

I think, however, in Mindy’s situation, I would do exactly what she’s doing. For the adventure of working and living in another country, I’d settle for my little tract condo and I’d drive to the store. I wouldn’t take it on full time as a permanent choice, but I totally get why this is okay for now.