Tate Modern

Back in London and the sky is grey.

I am staying at the Southwark Rose Hotel in - surprise, surprise - Southwark. The hotel was featured in a travel magazine around the time I registered for the marathon and it is really nice. The interior is beautifully designed and the location is perfect for the Tate Modern (located in a disused power station, the chimney of which you see on the right) or Shakespeare's Globe (the theatre itself is the white building next to the chimney):

After this picture the battery of my camera went flat, so I used my mobile phone instead. I am afraid, the pictures I took with it aren't very good. Here is a closer look at the Globe:

I spent the whole morning at the Tate Modern and more than an hour staring at Jackson Pollock's Summertime: Number 9A. What an amazing picture. At first it all seems random, especially if you consider how Pollock painted (he danced over and around the canvas, that was lying on the floor, dripping paint from a bucket that had holes punched into its bottom). But the longer I stared the more I was convinced that he was actually very much in control of the patterns he produced. The different colours are prefectly balanced and I don't think he has left much to chance. Interesting man, Jackson Pollock.

The Tate Modern is rehanging all of its Collection galleries. In the largest room of the Poetry and Dream gallery you currently find special displays of Surrealism, an artistic movement that I am especially fond of. Life IS surreal and the display is very fittingly a visual overload. The exhibits are almost crowded into the room, hung up close to each other and sometimes even over one another. I didn't know what to look first.

Since Sunday afternoon I have been constantly refuelling. I have eaten non-stop (three large meals plus sandwiches inbetween) and drunk lots of water. The visit to the Tate had made me hungry again, so I went to an Indian restaurant near the hotel and had a curry.

In the evening I met with a collegue, who lives in Southwark, and we went for a walk along the river.

I hadn't seen him since Carnival in Cologne, but he had sent "keep going" messages into what he called "the training camp". He ran a marathon a couple of years ago, so he knew what I was going through. Guess what. Walking made me hungry again, so we ended up in Wagamama. Chop sticks and me don't really go together. Maik made me practise with a black peppercorn that he took out of the mill, but I am hopelessly untalented, so I opted for soup.

Tomorrow I am going back home.