Warning: Guard Bear (and Bee, Bird, Pig, and Hedgehog)

Today we passed a delivery van which boasted an army of nine fierce guards watching over the vehicle while the driver was away:

I liked the squirrels on this distinctive sign belonging to the now-defunct Goslings Bank, which was taken over by Barclays Bank, of which there is now a branch on these premises.

Sometimes London seems like a theme park instead of a working, living city!

I've passed this branch of Lloyds on the bus many times, and always wanted to get a photo of the wonderful bee hive perched atop the sign:

(Thinking back, it reminds me of the birdhouse we recently saw in Amsterdam.) After I took the photo, I noticed that the entranceway of the building was covered in attractive tiling, complete with two drinking fountains that had been converted into lighting fixtures that retain their watery motifs.

We popped into one of our favourite London spots, the Courtauld Gallery, for a look at their current exhibit of Cézanne works. Apparently, the Courtauld has the most significant Cézanne collection in Britain, and this exhibit marks the first time that the entire collection has been shown. I especially liked this lithograph self-portrait (c. 1896-97);

an unfinished canvas from 1905, The Turning Road;

The Montainge Saint-Victoire with Large Pine (1887), which was "received with incomprehension when first exhibited in 1895";

and The Lac D'Annecy (1896), in which Cézanne "strived for what he called 'a harmony parallel to nature.'"

As a wonderful bonus, two paintings by Pierre Bonnard which weren't on display during my previous two visits surprised me as we walked through the rooms that housed the gallery's permanent collection: The Blue Balcony (1910)

and The Seine in Paris: The Pont du Carrousel (1922).

After leaving the Courtauld, we crossed Waterloo Bridge and took in three exhibits at the National Theatre. The first made use of the building's upper terrace--the first time I've noticed anything exhibited there.

We headed inside for another photography exhibit, The Press Photographer's Year 2008, and stumbled on what ended up being the most interesting show of the lot, Ashington Group: The Pitman Painters, an exhibit that was supposed to close two weeks ago, but was still on display for some reason. We hadn't heard of the group before, and were fascinated by this group of miners who started taking an art appreciation class in the 1930s before turning to producing art themselves, with some wonderful results. With our fill of art for the day, we wandered toward a different type of filling, courtesy of Nordic Bakery:

Although it poured on and off all day, we had amazing luck for most of the day, walking into buildings just before the rain started, and emerging onto streets again to find everything wet and shiny. Eventually our luck ran out, and as we walked toward our local fruit-and-vegetable shop, the skies opened and poured a month's worth of rain at once (at least it seemed that way). In spite of our umbrellas, we got absolutely soaked from the knees down, and I couldn't stop giggling as Bob and I tried to hear each other over the rushing rain all around us.