Someone is plenty

A woman in Alexandria repairs old sewing machines from a room the width of a door, on a side street near Raml Station. Most people walk past without looking in.

That is not the same as nobody caring. A man comes by every few months with the machine his grandmother used to make school uniforms. A young tailor brings in a second-hand one because the new ones do not last. A retired teacher drops in on Thursdays, mostly to talk about bobbins.

The mistake with work like this is to measure it against everyone. Everyone does not care about old sewing machines, and never will. Everyone does not care about almost anything: a new magazine, a neighbourhood football club, a better kind of notebook. If the test is whether the whole street turns its head, nearly every good thing fails it.

The opposite fear is just as wrong. It is very unusual for nobody at all to care. Put something real in a window and sooner or later somebody stops.

That middle ground, where somebody cares, is where nearly all useful work happens. It is not a consolation prize for missing the crowd. It is the actual job. She does not need the street. She needs the man with his grandmother's machine, and the tailor who wants something that lasts, and enough others like them to keep the light on over the bench.

Somebody is plenty. Somebody was always what it was for.