A Day in Buckinghamshire

Waddesdon House

After attending a friend's funeral in the home counties, we had the following day to explore a part of the country that I had not visited for over forty years. I had lived on the Buckinghamshire/Oxfordshire border for a year early in my career. Apart from playing for the local football team in the Southern League, the area had few attractions. Flat villages in a flat landscape without the vibrancy of life that I had known during school and university life.

We decided to explore within an hour's drive of Luton airport, so we headed from Amersham to Aylesbury. The narrow country roads seemed to host hundreds of isolated houses and small villages. Few of them had any shops, pubs or people. Every now and again, there would be an incongruous commercial development. Along one minor road was an Aston Martin dealership with 15 Aston Martins visible as we drove past.

We briefly considered sampling what Aylesbury had to offer, but the High Street had that vibe that shuns any desire to stop and explore the town. It was home to franchised shopping chains, visitor-unfriendly parking restrictions and few interesting buildings. I despaired as we drove on past swathes of new commercial developments with endless car showrooms and supermarkets. The batch of design-free new housing estates hosted high-density brick offerings with little architectural merit. They had no nudge to the vernacular and lacked the pleasing symmetrical features and layouts of many of the post-war council house schemes; the ones built by councils before system-built houses and high-rise flats were stipulated by central government.

We drove on, having realised that we were close to Waddesdon Manor, one of the many Rothschild properties in the Buckinghamshire area. The house was designed as a French Chateau and built in the 1870s at the top of a hill in what is now landscaped parkland. Although the house was closed, there was access to the wine cellars and various exhibitions. The October school holidays meant that the place was buzzing with children. An exhibition by Platon H, an abstract artist who has used the Rothschild natural history collection to produce collages of digital images, was the highlight in the absence of the house being open.

Despite the efforts of the Rothschild family in entrusting the safeguarding of the estate to the National Trust, it had that slightly ossified and stale look. In many ways, it represents the decline in ambition and upkeep that afflicts much of the UK nowadays. It is used more for corporate entertainment and to attract tourists than to engender new ideas or promote development. 

The absence of care for the built environment was echoed as we meandered back to Luton through the pleasant but unspectacular Buckinghamshire countryside that was the scene of the great train robbery. Drowsy villages that are now commuter homes, busy roads, a pylonscape, unsightly commercial parks and new roads that dissect the landscape. As will the HS2 rail line in the future, if it ever gets constructed. It convinced me that leaving the home counties in 1972 was a perspicacious move.

Empty bottles and a French Renaissance Chateau

Decorative pillars 

One of the many statues that inhabit the grounds

A bum view of the Waddesdon pile

Platon H collage using elements from the Rothchild Natural History collection

Waddesdon parkland

Manchester City Redux

Kevin De Bruyne

My paternal grandmother came from Manchester; she had lived in a terraced house close to Maine Road that was destroyed in the Blitz of 1940. She brought the family tradition of supporting Manchester City as we watched the FA Cup Finals in 1955 and 1956 as a family. My interest in football was blossoming, and Man City were easy to support as they won the 1955 final and the legendary Bert Trautmann, one of the few non-British players in the league, played out the 1956 cup final with a broken neck. My allegiance switched soon afterwards when my maternal grandfather began to take me to Deepdale to watch Preston North End. They surged up the first division in 1957 and 1958, coming third and then second to Manchester United and Wolves, respectively. I attended almost all of their home games during these seasons, sitting on the cinders next to the pitch.

But a precedent had been set, and whenever Manchester City played with verve, I would be ready to support them. In the late 1960's the manager of Man City, Joe Mercer, assembled an attacking side around Colin Bell, a total footballer and one of my all-time favourite players. I would go to watch City at various grounds when at university, getting lifts from friends who were regular fans. This interest was continued when I shared a flat in Liverpool with a fanatical Man City supporter. We made regular trips to Maine Road with my flatmate's father, who was a season ticket holder and the town clerk of Knutsford.

By 1971 I had transferred my allegiance to Liverpool because an old school friend was playing for them. The atmosphere at Anfield in the days before all-seater stadiums was quite breathtaking. The patter between the fans and the police on horseback was worth the ticket price alone, and the concern of the Kop to look after anyone injured in the swaying terraces was one of human decency. Equally, the rousing support for visiting goalkeepers was courteous, humorous and part of the rich theatre of games at Anfield. Liverpool simply steamrollered the opposition, and if not Tommy Smith scythed them down.

And now for the third time in my life, I have once again become an avid Man City fan after seeing them dismantle all the opposition this year with a panache that I have never seen in either the First Division or Premier League before. Only Ajax, Barcelona and Bayern Munich have shown such outstanding flair and domination of their leagues in the past thirty years. Pep Guardiola is an obvious link between three of these clubs, but, as in the Colin Bell era, there is an outstanding complete player in Kevin De Bruyne. This time, he is supported by at least another five world-class players in Aguero, Silva, Sane, Company, Mendy and the as yet greatly underrated goalkeeper from Brazil, Ederson. He has the bravery of Bert Trautmann with the reflexes of a gymnast and the distribution skills of a midfield schemer.

It is the first time in years that I have made a conscious effort to watch all the football games of a team. The movement patterns, the skill and speed of their play are exquisite, and no matter who you support, they are the team to watch. An added bonus is that Jose Mourinho's style of football, which he has grafted onto Manchester United, has been exposed as cynical, defensive and boring. Mourinho's ego and United's popularity is being deflated by every extra point accumulated by their noisy neighbours.