MK not OK

Note to self: if you absolutely, positively must go to IKEA - an unpleasant enough experience as it is - then under no circumstances should you go to Milton Keynes for the privilege.

I hate Milton Keynes.

I hate its sterile landscape, its featureless flatness, its retail-and-business-park characterlessness, its uprooting and appropriation of a south London football club, and (of course) all those fucking roundabouts, each one a fresh circle of hell. Most of all, though, I hate the way that Jen and I only seem to have to be within a five mile radius of the shitehole to begin bickering over directions.

But then the place really doesn't hold good memories for us. A little over four years ago an unfortunate series of events left us stranded for three hours on a Sunday evening in the grotty little cafe in what passes for the coach station. With our wallets nearly empty, the cash machine broken and nothing in walkable distance, we had around £2.50 to spend between us and were forced to make do with one polystyrene cup of thin brown stuff masquerading as coffee and the worst bacon sandwich I've ever had.

Next time we have to go to IKEA (if there's a next time), we'll go to Coventry instead. Thinking of which, why couldn't Milton Keynes have existed in the '40s? From the air, all those roundabouts might have looked like targets...