Monday, August 22, 2005

A fleeting glance over my shoulder

While driving the little man to his second birthday party of the day yesterday, I decided to go through the middle of London's downtown. I do this kind of thing all the time - I figure that taking a different route whenever the urge strikes allows us all to see things we wouldn't otherwise see.

Little man in his back-seat booster agreed, and happily commented on the interesting new vista that unfolded outside his window.

As I cruised to stop in front of an interminably long red light in a city of interminably unsynchronized traffic signals, something reached out from my peripheral vision and prompted me to take a closer look. I'm glad I did, because this is what I saw.

It's just a picture of a couple of upper-level balconies on a downtown block that time seems to have passed by. But it provides a tantalizing glimpse into how two households live, and how things might have looked long before any of us was even here.

This slice in time lasted all of 10 seconds while I grabbed my camera, barely composed the shot and fired the shutter before hastily stuffing everything back in the console before the light once again turned green.

But it's one of those little pieces of happenstance that seems to happen on days like this, when you're hanging out with a fascinating little person and you're not overly worried about the big nasty things in the world.

Lesson learned: I'll be taking the scenic route more often from now on.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

AND, you probably already live by this rule, never go ANYwhere without your camera. Nice picture. It doesn't look like any part of London I've every seen.