The Lion Between Two tour buses cross on Westminster Bridge Road, and for the width of a second the city's most patient resident is boxed in. The South Bank Lion — Coade stone, weathered pale, once the emblem of a brewery that no longer exists — has kept this corner of the river for longer than any of the traffic that now obscures him. He is not looking at the London Eye behind him, nor at the passengers on the open top deck, nor at the pair walking beneath his plinth in the shade; he is looking, as he always has, well beyond the bridge. What the photograph holds is the gap between them: the narrow slot that opens between two moving advertisements, and how briefly the older London stays visible through it.
The Lion Between Two tour buses cross on Westminster Bridge Road, and for the width of a second the city's most patient resident is boxed in. The South Bank Lion — Coade stone, weathered pale, once the emblem of a brewery that no longer exists — has kept this corner of the river for longer than any of the traffic that now obscures him. He is not looking at the London Eye behind him, nor at the passengers on the open top deck, nor at the pair walking beneath his plinth in the shade; he is looking, as he always has, well beyond the bridge. What the photograph holds is the gap between them: the narrow slot that opens between two moving advertisements, and how briefly the older London stays visible through it.