It's the year 1355, and this is Jeffrey, a shoemaker in London, who wakes before dawn to a city already ringing with bells.
Londoners told the time by the bells of nearby churches, because almost no one owned a clock.
Jeffrey is a chord wainer, a maker of brand new shoes from fine leather.
And, by the rules he had to follow, he was actually forbidden to repair old shoes, because mending was the separate lower job of the cobbler.
The group that made those rules was called a guild, an association of skilled craftsman that tightly controlled a single trade.
And many such guilds, representing different crafts and trades, were woven into the government of the city itself, centered on London's great civic headquarters.
The Guild Hall, which, by the way, still stands today, though much altered from its medieval form, right in the heart of the historic financial district, among the skyscrapers of the modern city of London.
Like most Londoners, he lives above his own workshop and sells straight through the ground floor window onto the street.
Home, workshop, and shop, where all the same building.
London held perhaps 40,000 people, Tani beside ancient Rome, but still, by far the biggest city in England.
