outside light (Page 201)

outside light

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Leonardo’s Alfas; vegetable aesthetics of Villandry; vive le vin de Saint Pourcain!

The runaround, after packing, checking out from the entirely adequate Belle Vue – especially after they gave us the room with the terrace, views over the Loire -, where the proprietress helpfully scaremongered in regard to the strikes, which are over nothing more serious than raising the retirement age from 60 to

Amboise – the last King of France; Chernonceau – White Queen in black room

A day of Chateaux: Amboise, our homebasecamptown; and Chernonceau, actually within bike-riding distance. What took us so long? Sunday, the market, of course. Going out this morning, Madame of Hotel Belle Vue advised us to have a look, they have regional foods, French, as if you needed reminding, traditional,

the greatest chateau in the universe, home

Advice ignored: don’t do the Loire valley’s most popular Chateau on a Saturday; make sure you arrive early. We’d paid for the buffet, Q. was free, so we made sure we were downstairs for the buffet breakfast – hot food, I’d been assured the night before as

high gothic to low western with a Frenchy twist

Here I am at a Mercure, just outside Chartres, where all beds were full, for a craft expo, having escaped Paris. J. has mastered the right-hand drive! I’ve successfully bitten my tongue to ribbons on the curbside, navigating, and putting in the odd palliative statement, like, Very good.

bring back irony. And Marie Antoinette. In the fight against the pomo platitudinous kitsch of Sofia Coppola, Takashi Murakami, Forced Entertainment

… at last a show to which I will not feel I am doing a disservice by penning the couple of lines I write here: Forced Entertainment’s The Thrill of it All, at Centre du Georges Pompidou. But first: if you are going to visit the mass-tourist destination of

digital photography provides resolution with no need for developing and little effort: forms, absences

Paris, inconclusive. This seems to be the title, even if our stay has not yet actually concluded. Tomorrow is our last full day here. A day, then, today, as inconclusive as any we’ve had here. Not unsatisfactory, exactly. But a few key movements were rather brought to an end

questions of organisation: City of Sciences, Mecca, the human salad spinner, the Qabr, remember your vote counts so long as it’s the right one, La Villette, post-industrial park, a look in at the City of Music, out on the street in Les Abbesses

We went to La Villette, Cité des Sciences, an area of Soviet-style indoctrination – with the democratic, positivist twist of being pro-participation and pro-tech-progress – and ideologically driven from start to finish. Advertised as one of the newest parks, it boasts gardens, a canal cuts through it, themed