ThursdayII August

The Tailors Part 1

The medium sized Tailorship,
resides in an old building in Kings Cross.
Its forecourt is surrounded by a grey, grilled automatic gate.
Employees arrive between 8am and 10 and leave about 7pm.
Some drive, arriving in shiny, rich looking cars.
Others arrive slightly flushed from the tube.
The man who tends the business’s evergreens and flowers.
(Of which there are many; some in a bed, others in tubs)
Is a dedicated gardener.
He could be the boss.
The beds are always packed and are regularly watered.
Almost nightly cans and takeaways get dumped in them.
On a monthly basis idle, drunken hands rip out a plant and leave it on the pavement.
Its naked roots trailing clods of earth.
In the beds the flowers make sense.
They look unusual in the concrete ferment.
Always perky. Common garden flowers not easily ignored.
In the evening the tailor can be found hunched down weeding.
Other times he stands staring into space, the leaking nose of the hose dangling from his hands.

There are other businesses in the row:
A hostel, an artist’s studio, what used to be an architects, the Ethiopian Christian Church and the Musician’s Benevolence Fund.
Snaking in one long human hive toward the Station.
Where one begins and one ends is not clear.
The architects went bust last year.
Its grimy windows a showcase for dead palms, blueprints and broken chairs.
The hostel sleeps a mix of recovering, just-released drunks and kids taking a look at London.
The Ethiopian Christian Church is full on a Sunday.
Its large and ardent congregation spill out after each service to the bus stop,
conveniently situated directly outside the church doors.
The smart young kids tear up and down the street, dodging buses and pedestrians,
running rings, round a well-thought out game.
Never can tell what the musicians are doing. Not playing music.
The reincarnated building’s sandy red bricks are in varying states of repair
Or disrepair.  
It could have been so many things to so many people:
A missionary hall,
A workhouse or a dairy, given the peeling, pale blue ‘Dairy’ sign at the end of the building’s row.