Currying favour

Slow start to the day, followed by a long, delicious lunch with Katherine's godmother in Docklands (who isn't backwards in coming forwards with the liquid refreshment either!) We staggered out a little later than intended to get the boat from Canary Wharf up to Embankment, where Katherine wanted to go and see the Matisse paintings at the Courtauld Gallery. She has ended up switching her alliegance now to Seurat - fickle these 7 year olds.

The boat was great - the river is so underused in London that it's nice to see it being used for any public transport at all. You get a wonderful view particularly of the old trading parts of London further downstream, and of course great views of all the bridges.

When we got off at Embankment there was a demonstration by British Tamils about the war in Sri Lanka. I've been whinging far and wide for quite some time about the lack of news in the UK about this conflict - can't remember whether I've done so here. I won't comment about what the demo was about because I don't think I know enough about it. Not through lack of trying - it's very hard to find out very much news at all (partly because access to where the fighting is is so difficult - funny how that in itself was a big story in Gaza).

There are 250,000 Tamils in Britain. I think that alone makes the story relevant here.

We didn't hang around for long as lunch had almost made us too late to get to the gallery before it closed, but it seemed a well mannered demonstration - lots of shouting, music and drums, but also lots of families enjoying a walking picnic.

Once back home, our hosts produced another magnificent banquet - curry with all the trimmings and then some. Because Mr B is allergic to coconut they always cook me a fab coconut curry when I come down to London without him. The curry's worth the train fare by itself!