Message from a Lord

When a model/calculation is tested over and over again and still give the same results, scientists call it a theory. My theory is that when you are in the right place, at the right time, doing the right thing with the right mindset, the whole universe comes together to bind it all up and send you a message: you’re doing alright. Funny how this has come up again, and I’ve observed this in the past too, but this time it speaks to me even louder and truer. Before the universe bound up to tell me great but simple truths, but this time it feels mightier and more significant. It may all sound a bit hoo-haa for some however; it makes perfect sense to me.

Recently I enrolled in a master’s course in Urban and Regional Planning at the University of Birmingham-my road to getting here has also had similar flavours as what I’m about to write about here-and academically I’ve never felt more like I belonged here than anywhere else. 

Since the course started, and since then for two days of the week I read, speak, and listen planning, planning methods, theory, urban design and all that. The rest of the week I equally live and breathe the same topics, albeit in the dark when my son is asleep, in a quite couple of hours stolen in away in the city centre library, on the train ride from Birmingham to Coventry, in the park when taking my, yet again sleeping son, for fresh air. So suffice to say I’m surrounded by the subject. But a little example that hints at my universal message this time was found outside my yoga class and Lord Rogers of Riverside.

One of our assignments in class was to attend a public consultation of the council and write an opinion piece of the experience. What the heck is a council public consultation? And where do I find it? But on Tuesday after an hour and a half of pretty aerobic yoga class at the sports centre there by the door was a small A4 poster of the AT7 centre in Coventry that’s to be redeveloped and a design public consultation was to take place that Thursday! Hey presto, assignment sorted.

Before the yoga class I attended a memorial lecture given by Richard Rogers, the architect who designed the Pompidou Centre in Paris, the Millennium Dome and Lloyds building in London, and was given a temporary access to a world far beyond my own, which completely inspired me. Today, I’m still thinking about buildings, architecture, cities and different times all over the world in total awe. Suddenly what I’m studying became something beyond study, but a constant thought and awareness. When I tried to read a text this afternoon for a class on Monday I couldn’t focus, and a for a minute I worried that the initial enthusiasm was wearing off, and I wanted to read something completely different for a change. And almost without any real thought my hands reached for the Sunday Times Magazine from last week and read every article back to front-it was refreshing to read about many thing I wasn’t aware of or didn’t know but could relate to now. Then I came across an article about the Riverside Café and it’s anniversary and who do I see on the page in front of me but none other than Lord Rogers himself, in a bright lime green shirt sitting next to his wife Ruthie (who part owns the restaurant) in a bright coral shirt, smiling as if they were greeting an old friend! 

Lord Rogers

I realise these are fluffy and consequential examples but to me they are enough-it’s just what I needed to affirm that the decision to leave my husband behind for a year, uproot my little son to a different country, burden my mum with part time and sadly unpaid child care, and take up studying for a master’s degree, whilst being unemployed and therefore without funds, are all for the right reasons, and it’ll all be alright.

Pompidou Centre, Paris

Millenium Dome, London

Lloyds Building, London