Stone Lion Hunt

I love lions in general and stone lions in particular - it's the unique combination of power, stateliness and feline laziness that does it for me. I can't walk past one without voicing him (yes,) with what I imagine he'd say - more often than not this is an aristocratically-lazy articulation that is somewhere along the lines of "...meuuuuhhh!"

Lion in the sun! Meuuuuhhh!
Meeting the lion atop the Bostock tomb in Abney Park this past New Year's Day merely solidified this lion-love. The Bostock lion is by far the noblest of beasts and one of the finest stone lions I have ever encountered. Just look at that well-patina'd mane!...Meuuuuhhh...sad lion..!
So when I got my paws on Grasscut's latest record Unearth and discovered the wonderfully haunting track "Stone Lions" thereon, I was overjoyed. It was then that things started getting all mixed up and muddled together, and strange lion-y coincidences started happening. It occurred to me that it was time to acquire a stone lion of my own. The lion hunt (erm,) was on.

I figured that this would be a fairly straightforward quest - find precast concrete-producing establishment; locate garden statuary; find and acquire lion. You see them by people's houses all the time - they're "A Thing!" Stone lions have been guarding edifices for tens of thousands of years! Clearly it should be nothing to find one.

Hah. The second I started looking for a stone lion there was not one to be had. I raided garden centre after garden centre; I stalked all the precast places that I could find. I found gnomes; dogs; children; angels and even firemen - but no lions. I began to feel a bit like Bruce Cockburn.NOT a lion. What are you doing with that fish? Put him back!
It was by total chance that I spotted a sign for a precast place one day while up in Guelph for the afternoon. It was in that wonderland, populated by gods and nereids, soldiers and...ducklings that I found my lion. Not too big, not too small, and happily reminiscent of the Bostock lion. Handsome, stately and paws crossed politely, he naps in the shade beneath my towering sunflowers. At last....meeuuuuhhhhhh...zzzZZZzzzZZz...