Tuesday 22 May 2007

Ordinary Londoners - No 1 in a series


Welcome to "Ordinary Londoners", a new series of portraits and stories.

Meet Len. An ordinary Londoner, born nearly seventy years ago in Kings Cross, he's been a shoe repairer ever since he started work at 15. For the last thirty years he has had a shop in Woodford. He also told me the story of the man and the woman who came into his shop with the handcuffs that wouldn't undo, but I can't repeat that story here.

It's worth knowing he's here if you need your shoes repaired properly - there are very few left as talented as Len any more.

See where:London Daily Photo Map

1 comment:

Tomate Farcie said...

This is a great series, Ham! I totally enjoyed meeting all these people.

As a kid, I used to really enjoy going to the "cordonniers" because first, it smelled real good in their shops (the leather, I think) and 2), I loved that they could fix our favorite shoes and make them look and feel good as new over and over! Of course, those were the days when everybody wore good quality leather shoes, not that "man made materials" crap.

Thank you, Len, for all your good work over the years and thank you, Ham, for the childhood memories :)