George

Any given day of the week, pictured. I am up early to see George the taylor and we are the only people alive in Fitzrovia. His shop is below street-level so I climb down a steep flight of stairs - he looks through the window tentatively to ensure I am a customer. Inside, his space cluttered with wide rolls of different cloth, finished and half-finished suits, thread racks and mannequins. Clutter. George has been a master of his trade since arriving from Cyprus in '49 and I have to assume his shop has been here ever since. While I am only picking up today we drink coffee which he boils on a bunson burner ("Turkish coffee the only thing the Turks have left" he says) and we exchange pleasantries. He pokes fun of my Jewishness and I his age - "you will be hunched over too, young man, what is important that you get something in return for what you have given up." What I like about him most is the twinkle in his eye - he loves his work - and he always has a joke. Today: "A man has a terrible disease and goes to his doctor - 'I'll pay you anything for a cure' he says. The doctor tells him he must drink the milk from a woman's breast. After a time, the man finds a willing woman and soon she whispers breathlessly 'may I offer you something more?' He asks: 'Do you have any biscuits?'"

Yes, London is a modern city but every now and again one stumbles upon a clue of what it must have been like before the congestion charge and CCTV or wi-fi and McDonald's. Surely it was a place, and fairly recently too, which was markedly different from New York or Tokyo or Paris or Amsterdam. Now I am not so sure.