He is the last saddler in Dublin and, like his trade, swept to one side by the times. Dublin's building boom now means there are apartments to the left of him, apartments to the right, apartments behind him, and those contemporary monsters Apollo House and Hawkins House before him.
He is Sam Greer, saddler and harness maker, of Poolbeg Street, Dublin. His business belongs to a different time. That of his grandfather, Sam Greer, who started the business around 1900, when the horse was everywhere, and that of his father Sam Greer, who saw the infernal, internal combustion engine take over. But the current son of Sam is doing nicely thank you. Catering to huntspeople all over the island, and horse lovers as far afield as the Aran Islands and Kerry. He even made a full harness - bridle, reins, saddle, collar, hames, traces, and breechen - for a Japanese businessman a few years ago. Proving, once more, that the world will beat a path to quality's door. It cost £1,200 and took nearly two and a half working weeks.
What he will probably miss though, in moving a door closer to Mulligan's pub, is losing some of his place in the sun. When there is a sun. At the moment, on a clear day, it shines through his window for about an hour a day, as it crosses the gap in the sky between Apollo House and Hawkins House. That usually happens at about 11 o'clock in the morning, and about an hour earlier in the summer. He could plot its daily course by the minute, such has been the predictable pattern of the 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. life, down all the three Greer generations. And in the summer he has the extra benefit of a reflected sunset, bouncing off the windows on Apollo House and Hawkins House.
But the gloom of his January shop casts everything in sepia tints. An ageing calender stuck on a distant December, brown saddles for repair piled up behind, "ladies side-saddles, there's a run on them for some reason", brown leather in rolls in front of his browned bench, strewn with bits and pieces of leather, remnants of some great enterprise. That was a beautiful shows bridle (costing £140) which took him a day and a half to make. And his grandfather's wooden stool, still in use. Sam stands at the bench talking of times past, an awl in one hand, stitched red leather piled neatly in front of him, wondering at how his grandfather could make a side saddle for £1.19 shillings compared to the £700 it would cost now.
And, as with all ancient trades, he believes old is best. Some of his tools - awls, curved knives, gauged knives, straight knives - were used by his grandfather. Today's equivalents are "very inferior." So too is the modern plastic harness stuff brought in from India and Pakistan. "Cheap" was the word he spat out, loaded as tobacco-laden sputum. "You can't repair it," he explains, "you just throw it away." A man whose genes are suffused with the majesty that is leather has no time for such wantoness.
He imports all his leather from Britain, in large round rolls. There are no tanneries anymore in Ireland. They too declined with the dray horse, in the 50s, when it looked so bleak for his trade. Then "it picked up again." He has been at it since he was 15 - which was 40 years ago. His father worked until he was 83. Sam's ambition would seem likewise, which is just as well. As this Sam has no son, and the business will close with him. And then too, probably, the sign over his shop will still read "Sam Greer and Son, Saddler and Harness Maker".