being the view; and the viewed

The other day in Victoria I was standing on a traffic island waiting for the light to change. A couple of coaches went through the intersection on their way to the coach station (I could tell: they had "Victoria" emblazoned across their front ends; one of them even said, "near to London's Oxford Street!" on the back), full of tired-looking passengers. I idly watched the passengers, the girl sleeping, the guy getting his stuff together, someone looking out the window.

And with that, I suddenly became the View, not just me, with a coffee, waiting for the light. It took me straight back to the days, so long ago now, when I used to get the coach to New York City, and how the people on the streets would look to me - glamorous, native - as I watched them through the slightly tinted windows. Like characters scurrying along in a silent, air-conditioned movie.

Well, so that was fun. I don;t think many of the people on the Oxford tube were entertaining any such romance about the streets of SW1, but this kind of feeling is like a virus, isn't it: once in, never gone.

A week or two before that I had been walking through Eaton Square, in Belgravia, with its white terraces and its air of perennial calm and money. However, we all know money is not always calm. On that occasion, surprisingly, I was carrying a takeaway coffee, which had been overfilled as it happens and kept dripping on my hand. But it was too hot to drink down. There were a well-dressed couple walking too slowly, annoyingly, and a man washing a car with a hose thaty stretched across the pavement. I was late. Anyway, I got past all them and was beginning to like it there, when I noticed a policeman standing in a doorway. He wasn't going anywhere. I got closer, then closer, and he stood and then stood. As I approached, he just glanced at me and smiled, a bit sheepish. Sweet. I wonder who he was guarding. And which of us was the view, and which the viewed? The lady or the tiger?