The Blackberry Walk

Constantinople discussion might have to wait until next week, apologies. The local cobbler's has closed. I walked down there yesterday to get my shoes resoled after having wrecked them in the Norwegian forest. It was two to three, then minutes before closing, when I entered. There, inside, things looked like normal: the same concrete floor with interspersed chipboard planks, spruced up with tired and frayed Persian rugs; the same hardwood counter; the same shoes for sale but never bought; the same large machine with half a dozen spinning brushes; and the same mirror behind the counter through which you can see the owner before he notices you. The same bell that rings when you open the door. I greet the owner, and I inquire about my shoes. They were in a sorry state. He takes a look at the battered pair, worn down from three years of labour, the last year of which with the last sole the owner here adhered on. That sole was beginning to come off; and again, on the Norwegian forest hike they didn't fair well, it was like taking a house cat to the savannah. The front half of the sole had detached, and began to bend back on itself from having been stepped on folded so many times. I was on holiday with one pair of shoes, there was little I could've done. He asks me when am I able to come and collect them. Odd, I think. He had never asked before, he only tells me when they'll be ready. Saturday, I say. To which he replies, "I can only do Monday or Tuesday for collections, because today we're closing. You are our last ever customer." He was only open from 10-4 Monday Tuesday, hours of the day I couldn't achieve on a work day, so he gave me an offer. Very kindly. He said he'd do them there and then, and to pop back in 10-15 minutes to collect them. "We live in a world of decay", I thought to myself. I know, I know, I'm a pessimist, a reactionary, all-sorts by nature, but it does seem to me as clear as crystal that all that is good withers, and all that is bad flourishes. It is as if our modern society plucks the flowers for composting for the sake of the weeds. Tesco's, the first shop I passed on my walk, is one such weed, as are all the supermarkets. They displace and undercut the locally run businesses, and run them into the ground. And the produce is far worse; but the convenience of shopping at Tesco's in our age of efficiency, under the reign of quantity, means all too many prefer it. Jobs too suffer under these supermarkets. Just the other day when I was shopping at Tesco's (I know, I throw these stones from a glass house) only to discover they had done away with half the tills. Converted them into self-checkout tills. Not the small self-checkouts for small purchases, but full adult-sized tills, conveyor belt and all. At first, I must confess, there was a bit of a thrill getting to sit behind the till and use the scanner. It was a bit like being a child and playing shops. But quite quickly the magic faded, as it only takes a few clicks of the scanner to realise working at a till in tremendously monotonous and boring, and a task one would much prefer to have done for them. Quite a lot of women, older women, worked the tills and did do it for you; where are they now? Only one till was manned, and needless to say, the queue was very long. These larger companies, their eyes set on revenue, not community, will always do this. In theory a company is a collection of people, but as companies grow their human element fades, as whatever power or principality which emerges takes hold. Driven by KPIs, these companies march off the cliff edge. The most advanced example of this is in private equity where companies, often times successful, are bought out, found to not be meeting certain nonsense targets, and stripped of their flesh and bones to be sold at market by the pound. The good are preyed upon by the wrong, and that which had value returns to the dust. And so I passed Tesco's and headed to the grocers - how lucky we are to still have a grocers - and bought some vegetables before returning to the cobbler's to collect my shoes. The 10-15 minutes he offered me had yet to finish, and so I put my groceries down and watched the master work. He isn't too old a chap, mid 40s I reckon. Always wearing trainers to my amusement. He had already adhered the new sole on, and was buffing and shaping the sole to the shoe with his large shoe machine. This machine, I haven't a clue what it's called, but at any cobbler's you'll see one. Wrought from green-painted steel plates with half-a-dozen wheels of different colours and textures for various cobbling tasks, no doubt, it made a tremendous grumble as if it were powered by a diesel engine. I acquire one new would be impossible, I suspect. They too are a relic of a bygone age. Ages comes and ages go; St Augustine was no stranger to the fact. He wrote from Hippo in North Africa, a Roman city, just as the barbarian Roman tribe named the Vandals were spilling into the city. With such a name, it requires little explanation as to what happened next. 'The City of God' was the work St Augustine penned at this turbulent time wherein he expounded his conception of the 'saeculum', a word received to us now as 'secular'. The word 'saeculum' means 'cycles', and to St Augustine - never quite shirking his Neoplatonic heritage - it is the world of changes and the everyday. And what are these cycles? They are the cycles of one's life, starting at birth onwards to death. There's the year's cycle, running through the seasons, and the days cycle from dawn until dusk. Spengler argues civilisations have cycles from germ through golden age to decay, and geologists argue the earth has cycles of glaciation and thawing. And on the most miniature scale, the scientist sees cycles in the atom and in energy: there are cycles in abundance in our sphere of change. This world of cycles is in contradistinction to God and the divine world, which is instead unchanging. One's sight should be set on the divine, on the eternal, because cycles of the secular world are always beginning and ending, like waveforms delayed from one another, overlapping, and compositing together, producing a wholly new pattern. Somewhere you're on that waveform; and so am I. Living in the secular world solely, you are adrift on those waves, sloshed to and fro, waves you can't control leaving you disoriented and lost. That is in the world of cycles. The divine world, however, anchors you to the eternal, to God, to the New Jerusalem; not to a declining high street. The end of the cobbler's cycle was just that: but one cycle concentric and interlocked with so many others. When my shoes were ready, I came to the counter to collect them. He did his usual schpiel where he showed me the parts of the shoe he touched up, and the parts extra he had to fix. He spoke wholly from habit. I asked him how long he's worked here, and he said he had worked here for 29 year, and owned the shop for 25 years. It's all habit, he's worked here his whole life. The shop, he said, had been open since 1947. I asked him about the closure, and without mentioning anything financial, told me people don't wear proper shoes anymore, and so many who would've gotten dressed up to go to the office work from home now. What I see on the trains is even worse, men in full suits travelling in sneakers for the journey. It looks awfully silly. And I'm sure these people, only changing their shoes at the office, hardly wear down the smart shoes. These far larger cycles in the culture have rotated, and beneath these larger wheels my poor local cobbler's has been crushed. A shop of the community, open since 1947, is now gone. I paid by contactless. He smiled at me with sad but beaming blue eyes, and said "Thank you for your custom." And with a heavy heart, I walked home.