Ode to the Barbican
I don't recall exactly when I first learned of the existence of the Barbican estate, but it was a long time ago. It was sometime in that era before the internet, when my only source of information was the television. You couldn't choose what to learn about or look up any further details if something caught your interest; all you could do is watch Discovery Channel and hope you'd tuned in at the right time to catch something interesting.
In this way, I learned about the Barbican in the same way that I learned about the Egyptian pyramids or the Sydney Opera House; images on a tiny television screen, about as far removed from my daily existence as the surface of the moon, and I felt about as likely to visit any of them.
The Barbican, in case you are not familiar, is one of those areas that architects find fascinating and normal people tend to loathe. I found it rather intriguing. Everything about it seemed different from normal: the strange shapes of the buildings, the odd but consistent style, and the pervasive air of strangeness, as if a whole city block had been accidentally dropped into the middle of a major city by careless aliens.
For the next several decades I forgot about the whole thing, as other concerns occupied my mind, until eventually I realised that I now have the ability to travel and experience some of the things that I had hitherto only seen on television.
London in particular has been well within my reach for a while now; I live not far from Major European Airport, and I can afford the occasional air fare. I have always been a bit of an Anglophile, having grown up watching BBC television and even learning English to a pretty reasonable standard that way.
Eventually I took my first trip to London, to finally have an unhurried look around and take in some of the famous sights. I had been there before once or twice before for work-related reasons, and in fact I hadn't liked it much; it seemed rather noisy and crowded, but you shouldn't judge an unfamiliar city on what it seems like when you are rushing around trying to find the location of a tedious business meeting.
Thus it came to pass that in the early morning of my 45th birthday, I emerged from a nearby tube station and looked for a way in. This is not as straightforward as it sounds; the place is deliberately designed to be a bit of a maze to navigate. The whole thing you see is separated from the surrounding streets by elevated walkways; the whole site is only accessible by pedestrians. (I'm sure you could ride a bicycle there, but I don't think it's allowed and I've never seen anyone do so.) It keeps you on your toes: passages snake in and out of buildings and suddenly make you feel as if you are trespassing. At times it is unclear whether you are inside or outside or in some half-public space, like a surreal parking garage.
I found a set of stairs and started climbing and leaving the noise of the city behind.
As I emerged near what I now know to be Defoe House, the sun had just come up over the rooftops and I stood there blinking in the unexpectedly warm morning light.
Never in my life have I so immediately felt so at home in such an unfamiliar place. Surely somewhere in the combination of seeing half-remembered places in reality, the overwhelming strangeness of the place, the sharp contrast of the noisy city with this quiet garden that I found myself in, lies the reason why. I have absolutely no desire to analyse it; if there's one thing I've learned, it's that when life hands you one of these magical moments, you grab it with both hands and you don't question it.