A view from the "Greasy Spoon"

Sitting in the "greasy spoon"one sees a whole side to humanity that is normally hidden.

People use these places as community centres, a place to have a cup of tea and a bacon butty and a chat with friends. Time is irrelevant, work is a far off mirage something remembered with a sort of fondness but now, on Benefits there is no need.
Time hangs slowly, each cup of tea or coffee is a sort of full stop between the periods of lassitude, a moment when they can remember when they had things to do and places to go. Wrapped in shawls to ward off the cold the faces peer out wreathed in care lines worn with worry, eyes darting around summing up the dangers as well as the opportunities, creatures of the Wild Wood always on guard.

I'm in an Arcade of small shops well, nearly shops since one stands on the outside transacting business with a shrewd, fly by night trader for goods that may or may not have fallen off a truck. The mobile phone is the most transacted item, the SIM cards and the protective covers. No security code is too difficult to bypass no request too risky, this is the street trader existing on the margins, one stop away from the open suitcase and an eye open for the cops.
Across from where I sit there is a beauty parlour where the women, always the optimist fight off the advancing years with a potion of this, an extension of that and a touch of paint as and when required. The fortunes women spend on the impossible fight against the ravages of time is worth half the national debt. Food on the table takes a back seat to a foliage treatment and wrinkle removal cream, we are after all more than what we appear but what we appear is more important, after all we can blag the rest.
The ubiquitous  Union Jack is draped across the back wall.  Few "Remainer's" in here although there is a steady stream of people who would claim a linage elsewhere.
At the moment a large black guy who claims linage with Mohamed Ali and George Foreman is treating us all to a loud diatribe of invective mixed with his love for England. His mind addled with Tennents Extra Strong Cider and a lifetime of marijuana is but an example of the flotsam and jetsam of a large multicultural city. Accepted, if not condoned people ignore him and eventually he drifts away to blast someone else. His day a mixture of images of who knows what, his nights probably spent in a refuge or a doorway somewhere, waiting the outcome of one more night in his Hell's Kitchen of an existence.