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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. Now

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 Versailles,

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 ‘follies’ – wrought from red-painted

holy supermarket & photo prayer

It was to be a housekeeping day today, a hunt for the Deutsche Bahn office, for a start, to claim a refund on the tickets that were supposed to bring us here first class, by train, and brought us second, then with no class at all, on the backseat of

misinformed, misled & missing Versailles for the equine theatre of Bartabas

We arise early – for this relaxed phase of the itinerary, if after a night in the city – to see Versailles. First info off: that the first Sunday of the month free entry is being offered. No. In a month or so. Regardless, follow the second tip: buy passport to Palais

Latin Quarter day into La Nuit Blanche: the compensations of bad timing

To Bastille to buy a scooter. Une trotinette. To St. Paul. Crossing Seine, Ile St. Louis, Seine, lunch on quai with view of Notre Dame. A very gentille proprietress of a new music-box shop told us how to get to Shakespeare and Co. and offered her loo. For free. Shakespeare