What is Salut!? What is it for?
Leaving aside the small matter of how someone who criticises Bernie Taupin's lyrics can then have the gall to follow an exclamation mark with a question mark, it occurs to me that a few words of welcome may be in order.
The reason is simple. After a slightly lonely spell - did I become unreadable, was I a casualty of the Telegraph's blog mania or have people been enjoying the sun, or coping with floods, too much to bother? - a glance at the statistics reveals a gratifying upturn in "hits".
Visits to the site include many from first-timers. Not all will have the time or inclination to look into the archives or check out the various links to learn more.
People arrive here by different routes. Some followed me from the Telegraph, because they liked my blog for that newspaper or were outraged by my sacking after nearly 30 years on the paper. That is not meant to be self-serving; my Telegraph blog attracted more than its fair share of brickbats, too, and criticism of my dismissal was, oddly enough, given much more of an airing at the Telegraph's own site than here.
Other visitors find me when looking on the internet for something else. I naturally hope some of these like what they see and come back for more, but many will naturally stamp their feet and resume their original search.
My friend and web guru Craig McGinty has rebuked me for the puns and levity in my headlines. Search engines have no sense of humour, he points out, and you are therefore losing out on potential readers/visitors.
I have taken some notice of that, while every so often insisting on my quota of self indulgence. The Elton John heading may be a case in point. If it had read "Sir Elton John victorious", more people might well have strayed my way. Sometimes, though, temptation just cannot be resisted.
Back to the opening questions. For answers, you must read on........
The photograph gives a few clues to my preoccupations.
I live in a beautiful corner of the Var and am lucky enough to have a pleasant home with glorious views over the hills - other houses are on three sides of me but the design means that most of the time, I see only their typically Provençal rooftops.
As suggested by the understated slogan of the top I am wearing in the photograph, I have a football team to follow from afar. I still like newspapers, and buy the Var Matin daily, and I love rosé wine when allowed by the physio to touch it. The glass in the picture was, I assure you, a prop added for the purposes of a Norwegian magazine's inexplicable interest in my life after the Telegraph.
And I write three blogs. Salut! Salut! Live and Salut! Sunderland. These are time consuming but, in many ways, rewarding. I am working on the one way in which they are not rewarding, but without exaggerated hopes of success.
Salut! is the parent blog, and concerns itself with - as you see at the top of the home page - "France, things Anglo-French and more besides".
You are most welcome here, to browse or to participate in the debates that arise, and indeed to navigate your way around the links.
There are gateways to the work I do for others - the Guardian's Comment is Free pages, for example, and the online magazine The First Post - and there are quick routes to items I have written elsewhere. Salut! Huit-Trois is just a signpost to where I live (the Var's département number is 83 and I inevitably end up writing a little about this part of France).
From a professional viewpoint, the kind of people who commission paid-for articles can easily see from these pages whether I could be of any use to them.
And yes, I do still need to work. I still chase stories and anything you have read about Elton John and his overdue victory in the case of the fake Greek statues came indirectly from here.
But what I still like best about blogging is what I liked when I was, though it ended up doing me no favours, one of the Telegraph's first and also one of its most successful bloggers. I like the buzz of instant access with readers. I used to worry about the number of comments each posting received, but soon came to realise that however ego-boosting it may be to inspire a long thread, there are other tests of a site's popularity or relevance.
So, on days when the number of pages opened at Salut! has exceeded 800, this remarkable achievement has not necessarily been reflected in the number of comments posted. Conversely, there have been times when an apparently paltry "hit rate" of around 100 has led to numerous responses.
One innovation I intend to introduce is the guest column. It has worked quite well at Salut! Sunderland, and my first guest writer at Salut! will take his bow this weekend. I am open, of course, to offers of similar contributions though, rather like CNN when they wanted me in their Paris studio to pontificate on election night, there is glory but no fee (I said no!).
No one should feel the need to post a comment about anything I have said today. I simply wanted to acknowledge the newer readers my main site is atrracting and offer a few pointers to Salut's background.
But take it as read that if you have thoughts, critical or favourable, or suggestions to make about the little Salut! empire, there has been no better opportunity to make them known.
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