On this day 24 years ago, a legend passed away in this house. He was known to the world as Freddie Mercury, and also one of the best rockband frontstars of all time.

Living in London to me is more than just reaping the benefits and opportunities of a best known, civilised, and supercalifragilisticexpialidocious city in the world. It is also breathing in the air that most inspiring artists have breathed, walking on the streets that most memorable legends have walked, and seeing the sights that most striking begetters have seen.

So now on the 24th of November, I have taken the chance that I wished I had every previous year: to visit the house where Mercury lived, wrote songs, enjoyed the last days of his life, and died.

It is a couple minute walk from Earl’s Court Underground Station, and also a very short distance from the swarming and glittering streets of the prosperous Kensington area. But here it is, almost humble in the midst of a most quiet and narrow lane.

‘Garden Lodge’ is written tinily on the front door, which is also tiny in-between the long wall that partly borders the huge mansion. The name looks simple, neat, old-fashioned, but at the same time still somehow imposing.

This all gives me a very strange, indescribable feeling. Doesn’t it appear opposite to the image Freddie created for twenty years? Where are all the contrasting colours and quirky styles of the flamboyant rock star? Where is the enormous ego of the writer for “We Are The Champions“?

But on the second thought, this is exactly the mansion Freddie had lived in, and then dedicated to his “common law wife”, “love of his life“, and “best friend” Mary Austin.

The marvellous dimensions of his haunt represent the monumental rock band, “the best — not the second best” as he told his band mates right in the first days of Queen, the legacy he knew that he had brought to life. But the quiet surroundings in contrast are his privacy he always kept from the world.

This is so much the house of the man who got the biggest fame for more than a decade and at the same time kept his illness in the dark till the very last day. The man who was in relationship with all possible men and women and at the same time ever had only one best friend throughout his entire life. The man whose death was mourned by the whole world and at the same time whose ashes remain the mystery of all time.

Oh, and what to say about the glasses frames of fans’ testimonials right there? That the house has also been one of the biggest rock and roll shrines in the world?

I’d prefer to think of it another way: that I am not alone setting foot in London for this kind of value.