A History of Milton Keynes part 1

Hello there Gentle Readers.  My new town requires little introduction if you live in the UK. If you live elsewhere however Milton Keynes may be somewhere you have never heard of. Next year is MKs 60th birthday so here is the first part of my potted history.

Before it was designated as a new town in 1967, the area that is now MK was an idyllic, rural landscape of open farmland, small historic market towns and around 15 small villages. One of these, the original Milton Keynes is mentioned in the Domesday Book.

Ancient and Medieval Roots

Early Settlement: Archaeological digs show human activity in the area stretching back to Neolithic, Bronze Age (such as the local Bronze Age gold jewellery hoard), and Roman times (including a Roman villa at Bancroft)

The Domesday Book: The original settlement of Milton Keynes was recorded in 1086 as Middleton. The name later evolved by adding the surname of the de Cahaines feudal family who held the manor in the 12th and 13th centuries.

Local Landmarks: Historic transport routes like Watling Street shaped the area, alongside historic sites like Tickford Bridge in nearby Newport Pagnell (built in 1810) and Secklow Hundred mound, an ancient Saxon meeting place. 

Towns Before the 1960s

The designated area later absorbed pre-existing 19th-century industrial and market hubs that grew alongside the canals and railway.

Wolverton: Grew rapidly in the Victorian era as a major railway works town for the London and North Western Railway. 

Bletchley & Stony Stratford: Functioned as busy coaching and rail stops on Watling Street and the railway lines. Bletchley notably played a critical secret role during World War II housing the Government Code and Cypher School at Bletchley Park. 

Post-War Growth: During the 1950s, towns like Bletchley actively agreed to take overspill population and housing overflow from bombed-out areas of London, setting the preliminary stage for the massive 1960s new town designation. 


#miltonkeyneshistory

The Teacher who Hates Children

 Hello Gentle Reader

As you may know, I have been writing quite a lot in the last few years. One of my novels is based around an amalgam of different teachers I have known throughout my life.

Graham George is a mixture of these wonderful, grumpy teachers and is in no way autobiographical.

You can find it on Amazon. I have added the backcover blurb for you to read and also the Amazon UK link. The book is free in Kindle Unlimited.

https://amzn.eu/d/0eC9tBcC

“They’re just cattle. Cattle with smartphones.”

At sixty-four, Graham George is waging a bitter one-man war against modern Glasgow youth. Armed with an unforgiving red pen and Islay malt, he rules room 14 with tyrannical authority. He has zero patience for digital progressive learning. To Graham, pupils like Jake McAdams, are just uneducated losers who are wasting the opportunities they have been given.
But beneath his sharp-tongued sarcasm lies devastating grief. For forty years, Graham has lived as a ghost, haunted by the loss of his wife and newborn son. In his decaying flat, an empty wooden cot stands as a monument to a life that should have been.
As Glasgow’s deep tribalism bleeds into his classroom, Graham must confront a brutal truth; he doesn’t just despise his students; he hates them because they are alive to breathe the air his son was denied.

‘A blisteringly dark, fiercely funny, and heart-breaking portrait of grief and tribalism. Graham George is an unforgettable anti-hero.’

#amazon #theteacherwhohateschildren

The One Million Countdown

 OMG Gentle Readers

When I started the blog on 27th January 2015 I hoped that a few people would follow my strange posts about living in Latvia. 

When I moved to China and Armenia you kept on reading my nonsense, watching the youtube videos and responding.

I published my first novel here, wrote about my life, getting married, adopting my son and finding my birth mum. I wrote about lockdown during Covid, Chinese, Armenian and Latvian culture.

I wrote about politics, religion and history. I wrote what I would want to read about and it seems quite a lot of you do too.

The number of times my blog has been viewed is fast approaching 1 million. Wow!

Imagine if I hadnt taken a 5 year break. Thanks for reading, keep reading.

Neil

#1million 

My novels

 Hello Gentle Readers

Over the last few years I have been writing some different novels and in July, I started publishing them on Amazon.

They are all free on Kindle Unlimited.

Tbe Covers are below. You should be able to find them on Amazon everywhere. If you have trouble finding them let me know and I can post the links.

#neilthomson #michaeladuffy #amazon #kindleunlimited

A Scotsman in Milton Keynes

 Hello Gentle Reader

After nearly 6 years in Buckingham, we have decided to move on to new pastures and we are now home owners.

In December 2024 my mum passed away and left me and my sister her house. 

It finallly sold early this year and Lena and I decided to bite the bullet and buy our own home. We considered staying in Buckingham but we found a lovely apartment in Redhouse Park, Milton Keynes. 

We got the keys on the 4th August and are moving in slowly, We have til the 10th to finish.

As this is a new adventure, for both of us and Robert, I have decided I want to start blogging again full time about our experiences.

Over the next few weeks I will be blogging about how we settle in to our new home.

#miltonkeynes #homeowner 

New Book

Hello my friends. I has been a very long time. Too long in fact. The reasons for that will become clear due to this post. Aside fron working, I have been working on several novels. 

Thete are more to come soon but lets startt with the one that has been a bit of a passion project.

Its called '12 lives' and its about 12 different versions of the same person.

Me.

As an adopted person its hard sometimes to explain exactky how that feels. Yes, I was loved by my parents but I always had a feeling I waas living someone elses life or that someone was living mine.

With this book, I write about 12 different versions of me. Lets call it a speculative memoir. 

 These 12 interconnected tales take me to different places and different names. I close my eyes and can see someone who looks like me but is different and strange but familiar at the same time.

In 11 of the stories I am adopted. In the last however, my birth mother Rosie, who I finally met in 2019, never gave me up. In that story she faced incrediblr prejudice and povertty.

The stories are all fiction. But they could have come to pass 

Here is the back cover blurb.

One pen stroke can change a destination. What if you could follow the lines you left behind?

‘I am an adopted child. To grow up adopted is to grow up in the company of ghosts, knowing that your entire existence—the clothes you wear, the accent you speak with, the name you answer to—is the result of a single choice on a piece of official parchment.’

On a rainy day in August 1968, a seventeen-year-old girl named Rosie is cornered by a cold administrator and asked to sign away her newborn son. In eleven realities, she touches the pen to the paper, scattering one boy’s soul across wildly different lives. He becomes a stoic dinghy racer on the windswept Norfolk coast; a plum-haired synthesizer player in the neon gloom of a 1985 Soho club; a rugged nightclub bouncer in an industrial steel town; and a high-flying financial broker facing a multi-million-pound collapse on the eve of the millennium.

But in the twelfth reality—the origin line—Rosie drops the pen. Choosing a life of poverty, judgment, and domestic tension over an easier exit, she fights to raise her oldest son herself.

Written with dense, tactile prose and a haunting atmospheric rhythm, 12 Lives is an extraordinary labyrinth of speculative biography. It maps the profound boundary between the quiet, domestic sanctuary of the lives we choose, and the monumental, solitary journeys of the selves we left in the dark.

Here is the link to the ebook if you want to check it out..

https://amzn.eu/d/0dwp2MPQ

Thanks for reading.

#12lives #adoption

Today in History: May 28th

 Hello Gentle Readers I have to applogize for being away for so long. Lets fire up the oven of time and bake the cookies of history.

1907: The first Isle of Man TT Race is held.

1908: James Bond creator, Ian Fleming is born.

1968: Aussie pop star Kylie Minogue is born.

1974: Edward VIII the king who abdicated, dies.

1987: An 18 year old German boy lands his plane in Red Square.