Watercolours and Bridget Jones

 Hello!

 With winter in Avignon progressing and exam season beginning, I kept an eye out for cosy and relaxing activities. Two came onto my radar: a watercolours workshop at my favourite bookshop, Cami-Li, and a showing of Bridget Jones's Baby at the Pandora Cinema.

 Having really enjoyed the half-term origami workshop at Cami-Li, I was excited at the prospect of trying something new. The shop has a lovely warm atmosphere and we were a small group. 

 The theme of the workshop would be Christmas and giraffes. This may seem an odd combination but Avignon's Christmas marketing this year had a giraffe theme, the idea being that Santa used giraffes for his stint in Avignon as it was too hot for reindeer.

 Our instructor was lovely and patient and gave us some basic exercises to practise brushstrokes and mixing colours. I did art GCSE and still do a lot of art in my free time, but it was good to have a refresher.

 Our next challenge was to produce two apples. I was really pleased with my result. A customer in the shop wandered by and complimented me on them, which felt wonderful.

 Finally, there was the giraffe challenge. We had to choose between painting a Christmas card with a giraffe pattern, or an actual giraffe in a Christmas hat. I think everyone chose the latter, though it was more intricate and complicated. We were given the outline and had to mix the colours and fill it in. 

 In the end I was quite happy with my giraffe.

 Overall, it was a really nice workshop. My times at Cami-Li doing activities, attending events and just browsing the books and chatting with people will definitely stay with me as some of the best times I had in Avignon.

 Then, there was Bridget Jones's Baby. I'll confess - and I know some people will be horrified by this - that I have never watched either of the first two films. I've seen little snippets of the first one, and I tried to read the first book but had trouble putting up with Bridget's whining.

 I was keen to see how I would enjoy this third film, especially when the plot seemed identical to Mamma Mia! - is Colin Firth a baby's father, or is someone else? I hoped it wouldn't be too same-y.

 The Pandora is a great place to see films in their original languages but with French subtitles, and for me that's a great way of learning. The room for Bridget was small and there were only about five of us there. It was a nice, chilled way of seeing a film.

 The one bad element of the experience was when I went to the loo and a mosquito buzzed around me, which for winter was a bit odd. It flew up and I followed it with my eyes and... it was like a nightmare. The ceiling of the bathroom was coated in mosquitoes. I don't know what they were doing alive in December but it was an awful sight. I hurried out and back to the film.

 So, Bridget Jones's Baby... I enjoyed it. Renée Zellweger gets a lot of flack for her accent as Bridget but I have no real issue with it - it's better than many American actors doing British accents. If you want bad British ones just watch the 1993 Much Ado About Nothing - it's one of my absolute favourite films but the accents are appalling.

 Bridget's plot was okay; there was a lot of filler but everyone behaved like a grown-up, which makes a change from the bits of the first one I've seen. 

 It ended a bit abruptly and conveniently - it seemed the makers wanted to keep the viewers hanging right until the last moment, which meant when the mystery was solved there was no fall-out before the credits rolled. It would have been nice to have a fuller conclusion.

 In conclusion, I liked it, and have been inspired to try and watch the other two films!

 Thanks for reading.

 Liz x

Origami and Harry Potter

 Hello!

 My half-term in Avignon was going well: I had been to Montpellier and photographed some autumn scenery. The final two activites I had planned were an origami workshop and a Harry Potter marathon (except I had only booked the first two films because I just couldn't have done them all!). So, let's see how things went.

 Firstly, origami. I had seen posters advertising these workshops, which took place at Cami-Li, a local bookshop, but they were at a time when I had class. Half-term would probably be my only chance to go to one, so I jumped at it.

 I arrived at the bookshop and we sat around a wooden table drinking the hot drinks that were included with the workshop. I had hot chocolate and it was amazing. There was just something very snug about the whole set-up.

 We were a small group, maybe four girls my age and two little girls. The instructor, Lucie, let us choose which of the prettily patterned papers to use, and we began learning to make cranes. I had enjoyed making paper boats and fortune tellers as a kid, and I thought this wouldn't be too hard. 

 It wasn't that complicated in the end, but it did take me a while to get my head around it. Some parts are fiddly and there's a stage where if you hold the folded shape the wrong way up while making the next fold, it ruins the whole thing and you won't know until later on. That was a bit infuriating, but we worked it out and soon the table was piled high with multicoloured cranes.

 Next, we learnt how to make tiny cranes from smaller pieces of paper. This was tricky! The final challenge was to thread our cranes onto some string, along with some beads, to make an ornament to hang up. I was really pleased with my final result.

 Overall, the workshop was a lovely experience, something warm and colourful in the middle of the cold weather, and I was sad that I probably wouldn't be able to go again because of the timetable clash. Ah, well.

 On the Friday before going back to Uni, I set off for the Pandora Cinema for their Harry Potter Marathon. The Pandora specialises in foreign-language films which aren't dubbed but instead have subtitles in French. Inside there was the kind of demographic I would have expected for a Potter Marathon - lots of millennials! I settled down as Philosopher's Stone began.

 I don't know exactly how many times I saw that film during my childhood, but it would have been a lot. This was pure nostalgia. With regards to how they subtitled it, I was interested to see that they kept the French versions of names from the French translations of the books, for example Snape being "Rogue".

 I can understand how they might have done this so that there was some continuity for French viewers who read the French books. However, for those that hadn't read the books, it must have been odd when the characters so clearly weren't saying the names that were in the subtitles.

 On the plus side, I like how the subtitles were in a magic-y font and how each set appeared onscreen at what felt like the right time, with sentences being split appropriately. It made a pleasant change from the awful English subtitles I so often see on French films, with horrible fonts and too many words onscreen at a time (to the point where it can spoil surprises).

 There was a very brief break before the second film, and I ran to get a sandwich from a nearby bakery. The Pandora is on the Rue de la République, which is a big shopping street, so there are plenty of food options. I and the other spectators milled around outside the cinema, before heading back inside for Chamber of Secrets.

 Part of the reason why I chose the first two films to watch out of the eight was that they have an old-school feel that was lost from the third film onward. This is probably due to a mix of the plots getting darker, the characters and actors getting older and the films no longer being directed by an American - Chris Columbus's idealised view of the UK and its boarding schools certainly plays a big role in the first two chapters' aesthetic.

 So, I enjoyed Chamber of Secrets' strange mixture of childhood innocence and scary monsters (though I wish the Basilisk could have somehow lived. I always have to look away from the blinding part). Sir Kenneth Branagh was brilliant as Lockhart; Alan Rickman was excellent as ever. It's just a really well-made film with great actors.

 So, that was my half-term in Avignon. Although going home would have been nice, I feel I made the very best of staying here and had a fun and refreshing week.

 Thanks for reading,

 Liz x