My thanks to so many people who have given Salut! a bright start.
The links from the farewell posting on The Daily Telegraph website and from petite anglaise and thisfrenchlife have helped and I am grateful.
Your messages have been kind and I note that Salut! has even managed to import some of my Telegraph blog's famed squabbling.
Permission sought to use the original from the seductive Swaledale site where I found it; my picture-of-a-picture must do for now
If I like to think I know a little about France and the French, writing
down all that I know about the mechanics of blogging would not cover
the back of a bus ticket. But I am not quite the model for Private
Eye's "p***ed old hack baffled by new technology" slogan. In time, a
commodity that suddenly presents itself to me in abundance, and with
the benefit of generous offers of advice (Petite and This French Life
again), I will learn how to make Salut! look more professional. Not,
however, just yet. The last nine days have naturally been difficult and
chaotic. I have spent much of that period in the UK. London's little
surprise for me came just ahead of one of the occasional
invasions by the Telegraph's fashion department, filling up the paper's
Paris office/apartment that remains my home for the time being. Hilary
Alexander - so well connected in fashion that on one previous visit,
Stella McCartney dropped her off outside after both had dined with Karl
Lagerfeld and Nicole Kidman - and her colleagues are considerate
guests. Their sense of urgency and my professional inactivity certainly
made for
something of a mismatch, but while I was relieved to escape, they
cannot be blamed for driving me out. One trip was for formalities
arising from my present circumstances. The second had been planned long
ago and took in a pilgrimage to my seat at the Stadium of Light and a
Sunday morning walk in glorious Swaledale. And the third was linked to
a farewell party (not mine; there are a few about just now). Salut! was
conceived as four of us walked along the banks of the river below the
village of Reeth. Joan Dawson, almost ready to set up as a
psychotherapist after a
bold mid-life career change, asked for ideas on what to call her
practice. I asked her, since she is a French graduate and witty, to
suggest names for my blog and for the website that may well follow.
Finding possible names for my sites was relatively easy. I wanted
something short, Salut in the end seemed to fit the bill and the
exclamation mark completed a personal conversion that I owe to the
style of my Telegraph blog (I have had a lifelong aversion but the
French use them all the time and simply found myself sucked in). But
what are we to call Joan's practice? Hearts and Minds? Northern Soul?
Nothing that occurred to us seemed quite right. We were also stuck with
the knowledge that one of her friends had already
come up with a title that managed to be as inappropriately flippant as
it was brilliant. Joan, another of those unfortunates devoted to
Sunderland football club, wants to base herself in that city. Her
friend's suggestion? Mackem Better.
* to whom no blame attaches for the wonky Eiffel Tower or the picture of Reeth
Recent Comments