Saturday Wandering

Sometimes it's difficult to tell what's litter and what's not in London:

Bob said that maybe the little vacuum cleaner had been charged with the job of cleaning up all of London and had konked out after all his hard work. Of course, that job will never be complete, regardless of all the I-think-I-can rhetoric that the 2012 Olympic committees may be spouting. Anyway, leaving the vacuum cleaner behind, we wandered down to Exmouth Market and browsed through the usual selection of artisan bread, olives, spices, and cheese.
From there, we headed to the British Library, where we marvelled in their Sir John Ritblat Gallery of literary treasures, and had a peek at the fascinating exhibit, London: A Life in Maps. The latter was quite crowded though, and we only had a cursory look around before heading up to Stoke Newington Church Street for a bite to eat. We ate at a great deli on Church Street (yummy panini and coffees) and the very friendly staff even threw in a few cookies on the house! After lunch, we walked through Clissold Park and came across the oddest sight:
Art installation? Random act of 3-D spirographing? We have no idea . . . Anyway, it was a lovely day for a walk, when our coughing cooperated.

From Stoke Newington, we jumped on a bus down to Waterloo and walked along the Thames with the Tate Modern in mind. Along the way, we decided to go into a building we've passed many times without going in--the National Theatre:
As can happen in a city like London, we happened to walk into the building five minutes before a free jazz performance, and as rarely happens anywhere, a couple left some prime seats empty a minute before the show started, so we sat down for about twenty minutes and enjoyed our excellent timing.
The multipurpose buildings of the National Theatre have a lovely community feel to them--while the music played on, we saw two different photo exhibits (both excellent), walked through a variety of cafés and one swanky restaurant (will we ever eat at a white-linen-tablecloth establishment in this crazy, expensive town?), and got a new vantage point from up on the second floor:
From the National Theatre, we walked to the Tate Modern and wandered through one of the exhibition halls that we hadn't visited before. The Tate Modern was in the process of mounting their next big show, so without a major pay exhibit on, it was actually nicely lacking in crowds. Another bus home and now Bob's playing his new (to him) acoustic guitar, serenading me with silly songs while I type. Oh oh, he just rhymed "Bob" with "blog," as in "she puts everything she's got into the blog and ignores Bob." I guess that's my cue to sign off!