Barbican Blah Blah Blah
| Monday 19 July, 2004 |
The Barbican is a city within a city complete with common communal facilities such as a gym, a barbers and considering the population of the enclosed conurbation, a rather grandiose local theatre. It's a council estate for City playboys with all the urban brutality that you might find in some of the swathes of mass municipal housing in South East London. Just more knobbers per square meter at The Barbican.
When Mr Tony talks of 'social exclusion' on the Aylesbury Estate in Walworth, what he really means is the rejection of local people by government. The Barbican is the same landscape as the Aylesbury, if not a little more ugly (buildings, not people, but I'm willing to argue the case for the latter).
The main difference between a private and public estate of course is the sense of community. The Barbican becomes a Ghost Town at the weekend – no life, no soul; the community de-camps to Kent in their four wheelers, no doubt causing a countryside onionbagblogger to write some spiel about City intruders.
Having money doesn't mean that you have sense though; Follow the Yellow Brick Line is an internal twat-proof mapping system at The Barbican so that the little lost City boys can find their way to the tube.
Ask an Aylesbury geezer how to get from Chiltern to Missenden Block and right you are guv; he'll probably even take you there in person and put the kettle on for you. Unfortunately there was no one around at The Barbican for me to ask during my visit, apart from some dear old Blue Rinse bird that was all set to call 999 until she saw me depart.
She knew I wasn't local though – I managed to make my way out of the gated ghetto without any yellow brick nonsense. It wasn't difficult – I just opened my eyes and looked for life again.
(click on thumbs to see large image)
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