Ye Olde France

castle and clouds
Originally uploaded by Nyx.

OK, I've done a few things lately, I haven't just been slouching around like an unemployed down and out in Paris type bohemian wannabe.
Ever present on the list was the continuing visits of potential apartments to buy, ever present were the themes of good bad and ugly. Having had to reconsider his upper credit limit after visiting his bank, the Monsieur is looking at a different class of apartment now (ie the 'needs work' sort). My general feeling on this is that he's better to buy a rattier, smaller apartment in a good area (and renovate) rather than a larger, nicer apartment in the middle of WhereTheHellAmI-Ville.
Anyway, we saw a great little place that just screamed extreme bo-ho chic potential. When visiting apartments I've found I not only pay attention to the view, placement, noise (and reasons for selling), but just the unquantifiable vibe that the place gives me. Well, this place certainly needs a fair bit of renovating, but it had all the karma of an early 20th century traveller-writer den. We'll need to do some follow up analysis, so it's another wait and see situation.

Cinema-wise, we decided to take in the latest Tim Burton work - Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Obviously the childhood version was an integral part of my youth cinema memory, but as I'm much more of a fan of Roald Dahl than any interpretations of his work, I wasn't feeling too leery about seeing it. Overall I liked it, I think they developed the family structure much better than the first film, there was a dash of postmodern irony, a critique on society, a healthy serving of cliché, also - the Oompa-Loopas were cool. Though they didn't really need to be as small as they were. The resultantly obvious bluescreening just detracted from the flow. There were also a few unneccesary add-in to the literary storyline, but nothing drastic.
Oh, and still on cinema talk, they've done the Hitch-Hikers Guide Film. The preview looks really good. It always makes me nervous when the preview looks good. It'd better be good dammit. I can live with Star Wars additions being crappy, but the Hitch-Hikers Guide were defining adolescent books. So I'll be most put out if they've not done them justice.

So finally, this weekend, in between the showers (don't get me started on the weather), we popped over to Burgundy (Bourgogne) to check out the chateau of Guédelon, a project that already 8 years in the making to build a 13th century castle using only the skills and technology available in the era. Already feeling like we'd taken a step back in time while trundling through the rural backwaters of the Yonne region, this just added a little extra flavour of medieval authenticity. Being as I am, in such a densely populated area now, I forget how sweet the country air smells. And despite the showers being slightly inconvenient, the smell of damp woodsmoke, damp leaf litter and clean air was worth it.