During our time on this street we heard and encountered many tragedies, people who faced all manners of diseases and degradations, who nearly died, who actually died, whose children had been killed. There is no escaping the horror and tragedy in the interior of people’s lives. But it was particularly after meeting George that we found ourselves in tears after leaving his flat. Because in every other instance there was a sense that, at least, that person had once lived. With George, by contrast, one simply couldn’t escape the conclusion that this was a man, more or less waiting for his time on Earth to be over, but who at the age of seventy-six had never seen his life actually begin. And, worse still, he knew it.
Daniel Miller in The Comfort of Things
