He had been walking along the embankment for the past forty minutes. The Thames looked passive, its’ green murky water merely existing as it had done for millions of years. Growing tired, he decided to stop by a small, wooden bench. Slugging off his backpack, he slumped down on it with a heavy sigh. It was not the first time the piece of timber had bore the weight of a lacking human. The Sky was an impressive blue, clouds no where to be seen. His previous visits to London had consisted of bad weather and busy bodies, one of which was absent today. There’s a certain level of preparedness which one must obtain before walking the streets of London. Luckily, he had come equipped with more than his backpack. He was in no rush either: this helped. People walked past, each in their own realm of conversation, or for those who weren’t speaking aloud, an internal monologue rang clear; or so he had hoped. Had he been in the same spot 100 years earlier the only difference he would have witnessed was the cloth that shrouded their fragile bodies. The same problems would have still reverberated off the stone floor, that of love and purpose. Perhaps a larger portion of minds would have been present, worrying about what they would have to eat next rather than trivial issues born from a false reality. Half hoping someone would strike up a conversation with him, he sat there for quite some time. Two street cleaners came about with their large wheelie bin and even larger smiles. They spoke to each other in languages not from this neck of the woods. Both with a sense of purpose, they belonged to this still, heavily colonial landscape. The HMS Belfast in the backdrop, a ship that once roared across the World’s Seas now lay passive in the heart of London, a sleeping Jaguar hidden amongst the branches of a tree. Embankment was beautiful with its architectural design and large display of power. People from all walks of life would stroll by these buildings in admiration, forgetting what they once meant. Perhaps that is why they are so beautiful. An area once inaccessible by the agency of history, now yielded by the progress of modern thought. A group of three women he had never seen before, deemed familiar by previous childhood experiences. The family trips to Peru enabled him to recognise these women, a mother and her two daughters. To others they would have been another trio of strangers hidden amongst the crowd of tourists. Yet to him, they almost shared a familiar history. He wanted to talk to these three, to establish some form of repour, yet his anxious mind halted him from doing as such. Sometimes there are stories waiting to be told, ones that simply pass by you every day. A moment of courage allows two worlds to collide.