Kindness

The nurses at St. Thomas’ took good care of me and cleaned me up. Moments after my feet hit the pavement a stranger kindly gave me a polo shirt to put on, and later that day I picked up a pair of standard issue black pumps whilst at Southwark police station. These, together with the jeans I escaped with, would be my worldly possessions. After the fire, the pub cook let me camp on her floor for a month or so, a lovely lady full of east end life and a heart the size of a bowling ball. She was a mother to me whilst I was in London.

There were a few weeks to go before the end of the summer term, and the end of my degree. Everything rested on a final project that had gone up in the fire. I’d have to start again. The university gave me the summer break to put it together. A good friend, MD, gave me an old drawing board of his so that I could get back to work. AK loaned me her boyfriend’s apartment to work in over the summer whilst he was out of the country. JH provided some company and even pitched in with my drawings. This amazing show of kindness came together like a wind behind me. I did my bit too, and I graduated alongside everybody else that year.

The days after the fire, walking about with nothing but the clothes I wore… without so much as a piece of paper with my name on it, those were strange days. It was a long time before I went back to ‘owning things’ again… but I still don’t care about ‘stuff’ like I used to. I’ve lost sentimentality.

The landlords cried; they blamed themselves for cutting corners: no fire alarms or means of escape; the bars on the windows; the drunk and unconscious bar manager that had slept in the bar whilst the events of that morning unfolded; the loss of somebody’s precious daughter. The bar, ironically, had escaped the fire. The arsonist had posted his petrol bomb through the side door and the fire wound its way up the three flights of staircase in search of fresh oxygen, tearing through the accommodation. The arsonist was later identified from camera footage purchasing the fuel from a near by petrol station. He and his accomplice stood trial and served a few years. The pub was refurbished but never really recovered, and I believe it now stands empty.

I graduated into the recession of the early 1990’s and after several hundred rejection letters from sympathetic architectural offices I took up a couple of jobs at local retail stores. So many people did little and big things to help me get a foothold after the fire. “I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel” Maya Angelou. Well, I remember it all and I’ll never forget your kindness.