London, part two

On Thursday morning we roused ourselves out of our jet lag and, with our friend, made our way on the bus to Regent St, where our bank is. Suddenly we were back in Korea again, by which I mean that someone directed us to the right floor in the building, told us how long we’d have to wait, showed us where to get a free cup of coffee, where the toilets were, and in general treated us as worthwhile customers. More than that, the person who saw us in due course was exceptionally friendly and had everything ready to go for us. (And she had just been speaking to her friend from Attleborough, where we were due to stay in a few days’ time with our relations!).
After that we made our way to the Southbank, because my friend wanted to show us the refurbished Festival Hall. We finished up having a very nice lunch of paninis with roasted courgettes, humus and mint – interesting combination. After this we had the first of our many long walks around London. I’d forgotten just much walking you have to do: there’s plenty of transport (buses, trains, tubes, etc) but that doesn’t mean you never have to use the old-fashioned process of one foot after another. Anyway, we walked along the embankment remembering places we knew from the past, and in general re-acquainting ourselves with everything.
The Tate Modern was new, and we headed for it. It’s an interesting building – must contain some hundreds of thousands of bricks – and is enormous. Unfortunately, the exhibitions I saw didn’t grab me greatly. I think it was that they just weren’t modern paintings of the sort that I enjoy: lots of stuff that gives modern painting a bad name, even though some of the artists, like Francis Bacon, are huge in the art scene.
The following day we wound up on the Southbank again (after having done a patch of time in Camden Town, which was crowded). We had some very large and tasty filled rolls (handmade, as it were, in a Greek/Italian? place in Camden Town). We watched a guy painting, very meticulously, the railings along the Embankment. I spoke to him and asked how much he had to do – he claimed ‘down to the mouth of the Thames’ but I think he may have been kidding. He said he’d only done two sections of the railings since he started in the morning; that’s how slow the job was. In view of the number of buskers in the area I told him he should have put out a basket for some cash. I felt there was something familiar about his accent, and said so to Celia. She went and asked him where he was from. Taranaki in New Zealand...!
Footnote to the last bit: we went to church this morning in Wymondham (pronounced Windham) with our neice and her two children. Of course, we met someone who was married to a New Zealander, and he turned out to be from Rotorua.