Contrasts

I visited Luton today.  I wanted to get the keyboard of my MacBook changed while the offer was still available from Apple – MacBooks and MacBook Pros with the second generation of extra-shallow keyboards have a small problem with repeating letters.  

The Apple Reseller in Luton is in the Mall and the experience was quite strange, going from an unloved city centre into a normal (i.e. awful) shopping centre, and then out again once I had done my business.

Luton is a strange place: I remember trying to drive to Bassingbourn from Milton Keynes after returning from business at Warton by train.  It had snowed and the nighttime centre of Luton was virtually at a standstill because of it.  I had a Golf GTi which was unsuited to slippery roads, particularly ones on slopes.  But then Luton was full of cars which were not managing to move on slippery roads.  So I escaped to the countryside and found myself on more slippery roads with equal difficulty making headway along them.

I had no mobile phone (they were just coming into common use – this was winter 93/94) so no way of telephoning my wife, in married quarter at Bassingbourn Barracks while we looked for a house in the area.

So Luton for me remains a place that is strange, either a snowy night cityscape, or this unloved place with horrible blocky 60s/70s buildings in contrast with some reasonably attractive architecture, as here.