Did you hear about the crooked nails? It seems that after the Queen's Coronation, when the seats along the route were being dismantled, one of the foreman joiners noticed a man picking up the rusty, bent six-inch nails which had been left lying about. He asked the man what in the world he wanted them for.
"Where I come from," the man replied, "these would cost a fortune. When I go back home to Tristan da Cunha we will hammer these nails straight and use them again."
The foreman mentioned this to his boss, who told an offician, and eventually the story reached the Queen Mother. And that's how two barrels of shining new nails reached lonely Tristan da Cunha, with the Queen Mother's compliments.
~The Friendship Book of Francis Gay 1961
No comments:
Post a Comment