George Michael in his shop

HARRINGTON is still very much young at heart but, as the weeks whirl by, my mind is often drawn to “retirement”.

I think we all hold fantasies of stretching out in a hammock on some white, sandy, beach or becoming at one with nature on some peaceful allotment scene.

George Michael, who ran a cobblers in Finchley Road tube station for 40 years until he shut up shop on Friday for the final time, told me about the village in northern Cyprus he would be returning to.

He said: “The village has mountains behind it, forests full of pines. Down at the bottom you have the plain where we had our fields for agriculture. And then there is the sea, full of beautiful coves. You can sit there and listen to the noise of the sea coming in and out and be on your own. No one can disturb you. And then you can go up into the forest and you will find the springs, water that comes straight from the mountains. You can stand there and get peace. It’s a very different world here.”

Mr Michael recalled how he arrived in north London as a Greek-Cypriot refugee still wearing his army boots.

He worked in the rag trade before, and with the help and solidarity of many other refugees in London set up what he said became an incredibly successful business.

He recalled that in the early 1980s when the housing market was collapsing estate agents were flooding into his shop three times a day dropping off keys on the counter.

He told me: “Quick, quick, quick I’m waiting outside!’ It was the time of the yuppies. Money was everywhere.”

Mr Michael said that his time in the shop had helped him “mature”, adding that after seeing terrible horror in the war in northern Cyprus he now could “only forgive people”, and added: “You learn to be patient and to be polite and accepting of all nationalities, religions. If you have prejudice you shed it.”

He said: “But it is with a heavy heart that I’m closing the shop. The community here became like my family. I have at least 60 presents and 70 cards from people. I have seen them cry. People that knew us, from St John’s Wood up to Golders Green, from Kilburn up to Hampstead, they all come here. They are going to miss us. But this is the ending.”

Mr Michael compared his journey at the shop to Homer’s The Odyssey and said he was also inspired by Greek poet CP Cavafy, and recites his 1911 work about Ithaca, the island home of Odysseus.

“I have found my Ithaca. It is a beautiful jewel that sparkles like diamonds.”