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
