The ‘M’ word

Some class it as a town, though those who live there know that it’s far from it. When you hear of Martlesham, only a few things spring to mind: BT, the ‘older’ generation and our main attraction, wait for it…a brand new KFC. How this benefits our elderly population, I will never know. So welcome to the beautiful, yet incredibly boring ‘village’ of Martlesham, Suffolk: the only place you’ll ever see a tractor parked in Tesco’s car park.
    The reason for people’s misunderstanding of this desolate place is that as you drive past and see the big, shiny Tesco, flashing BT lights and pretty village sign, you believe that this really is the place to live. It’s not until you actually make it beyond the pretty sign and dazzling lights that you realise the estimated age of the population is roughly 85, and then you begin to wonder just why we have a tanning salon next door to the village bakery.

    The joys of public transport
    Residents of Martlesham can easily get a golden glow while eating a cream cake, but a bus out of this OAP’s playground is another matter. When the bus companies promise a reliable and friendly service every 15 minutes, quite simply, they’re fibbing. The bus comes every 30 minutes, maybe. If you’re lucky then a bus may appear, if not you’re left sitting in the cold clutching your £2.50. You watch the little dot representing your bus slowly (and I mean slowly) move around the electronic map, until just like that ‘click fingers’, it disappears and bam, you’re back to repeat the ever-so-frustrating monotony of Martlesham transport system. So, when you’ve waited for longer than 15 minutes and you do get on a bus, prepare for a bumpy ride.
      The bus ride takes you on a long and beautiful view of identical Kesgrave houses, the neighbouring suburb that lives up to its nickname of ‘toy town’. At 8 in the morning, when every normal person seems to need to get to work or school, the bus drivers have a field day.  You crawl around the bus route with the driver pushing his limit of 2 miles per hour and see the army of people waiting at every single bus stop (helpfully in Kesgrave these are only centimetres apart). When you finally reach your stop, you thank the Lord for the bus is so packed that people are beginning to struggle for air. To describe our public transport as pleasant would be a slight exaggeration.

Control those crazy teens
      When visiting Martlesham village square (perhaps for a freshly baked loaf or a number six medium gold spray tan) you may feel your ears begin to burn; however it’s not from the local gossips, but the anti-teenager device that’s recently been installed. Yes, that’s right; Martlesham, the ASBO capital of Britain, has an anti-teenager device. The high-pitched noise is played through the square when the shop keepers want a bit of entertainment, watching teenagers squeal as they feel themselves going deaf. When innocently wandering to the shops to buy your grandmother a nice scone, be prepared for the ear-splitting noise because we wouldn’t want you vandals terrorising our elderly population. I mean really, if our village were to win a prize for anything, it would have to be the biggest waste of money: an anti-teenager device for a village with the grand total of four teenagers. Perhaps if the money was spent on making this village a little less ‘anti-teenager’ and actually creating something to do (besides the WI meetings and village bowls) there would be less anti-social behaviour.
    After living in the village for 16 years, I have not yet witnessed the scandalous youths of the village do any more than hang around and play football. Far from the village council’s ideas of us crazy teenagers terrorising the elderly. What’s next? The council may as well confine us to our houses, just so we can’t cause any more trouble, or perhaps build a giant teenager pen, so we can just vandalise each other. Even better, they should just demolish the village entirely and create one big, super retirement village, complete with seven million anti-teenager devices.  So far the village council has succeeded in suppressing our crazy mob, but one day when technology breaks down, we’ll be back.
   
I’ve been to the year 3000
      What does the future hold for our cosy county village? More tanning salons, nail bars or perhaps just another fast food restaurant? Who needs a traditional little bakery when you’ve got a KFC? I suspect with the rapidly ageing population, Dorris from 17 Saddlers Way will probably become the oldest woman in Britain, at 113 and still going strong. I can predict that the bus service will still be as unreliable as ever, but of course twice as fast, once flying buses have been invented (not before flying pigs, of course). The bus fares will shoot up too, from £2.50 to £5.20 all the way to £20.50. Or perhaps the government will reduce their own pay and invest in the transport systems, making them free to all. At this rate, the idea of flying buses seems more reasonable. Realistically it’ll probably just stay the same old Martlesham, but with a whole new generation of senior citizens. And possibly a cinema complex, but that’s another matter.