The pleasures of London stem from many directions. The layers of history are the most obvious, but because London is as large as it is and frequented so often, you are bound to run into people you know at some point. I ran into people I knew in the heart of London, but when I ran into a friend from high school that I had not seen for seven years, painting the inside of a second hand machinery shop in Haringey (Tottenham) I was more than a little surprised. (It is the equivalent in New York of finding someone you know painting a warehouse in a remote part of Queens or Brooklyn.) London, and you could probably say this about all large metropolises, attracts the world, but when an event like this happens, it makes the town seem, somehow, more intimate.
My brother and I were at the machine shop to buy a drill press. He claimed he was buying it for my birthday, but our new workshop needed a drill press desperately and, frankly, you never need to buy brand new standard workshop tools in the UK. The second hand market is lively and far less expensive. In any case, my brother needed a drill press and convinced himself that he could spend the money if it was going to be my birthday present. The new workshop was located on Narrow St., near Limehouse, in East London. It was in the old lock keeper's house for the Regent's canal and boat basin, before the lock got moved about one hundred yards up the river. You entered the house off the road onto a quay that was quite large and where we worked when the weather was warm. Indeed, one morning was warm enough that we stripped down to our underwear--London on the river could be very humid--as there was absolutely no one to see us amid all the warehouses. The river was always busy with boats going by when I noticed that nothing was happening and, as I looked up the river, I could see two police launches flanking a larger boat. I called my brother over and he said, "it's the Queen, she's doing a walkabout in Greenwich this morning". Sure enough, a couple of minutes later, there she was, maybe 50 yards away, and as we waved to her in our underwear, she waved back.
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