Salut!

Bienvenue en France; warmer still in parts

All the jumping-for-joy pictures of successful Bac students have been published, schools are breaking up and the resorts are getting busier.

The great annual exodus from cooler corners of France - and indeed from numerous other less appealing parts of Europe to be in the summer - is under way.

On the continuation page, I offer a few thoughts and tips to people planning to join that great wave of sun-seekers and Francophiles.

Picture: UN Environment Programme
Already in southern France, there's the sinister familiarity of forest fires to remind us that the hot, dry season is back.

One fire in the Var, between La Motte and Roquebrune-sur-Argens, was apparently started by a carelessly tossed cigarette end; another, just controlled, caused 900 people to be forced out of their homes and reached the fringe of Antibes.

There'll always be cretins who enjoy starting fires deliberately. Sometimes in France, it turns out to be someone connected with the fire brigade, hard as it is to accet that evil thoughts would ever cross the minds of those lean, muscular sapeurs pompiers you see courageously focused when on duty, or keeping fit when not (football and jogging in the Tuileries, volleyball and jogging in Le Lavandou).

But it's worth reminding anyone prone to serious lapses of concentration that French law does not look with any great understanding on those who, even accidentally, set woodland ablaze.
The Med: a more reassuring sight

Alan Johnston is free

News that two pictures are disappearing from Salut! in one day suggests that I am having technical problems.

But in the case of Alan Johnston, whose face has greeted visitors to my site for several weeks, the need for its removal is a happy one. I am delighted, and much relieved, at his release 16 weeks after he was captured by Islamist fanatics in Gaza.

Alan's photograph will remain here for most of today, as much as anything as a mark of respect from Salut! for all those who currently find themselves victims of the singularly inhuman act of taking a person hostage and using his or her life, safety or freedom as a negotiating counter.

And now free Ingrid Betancourt
Picture: rsepulveda

And I aim that thought at kidnappers of any religion or none, and their victims, who range from Ingrid Betancourt in Colombia to thousands of less publicised prisoners around the world.

Incidentally, do not go away with the impression that Alan's captivity was genteel and civilised. His jailors may have fed him and, at an early stage of his detention, promised not to harm him. This did not stop them also chaining him hand and foot for 24 hours at one point, and denying him sight of the sun for three months.

"It was like being buried alive," he said, though even that was probably preferable to being fitted with a vest of explosives, under threat of being blown him up should any attempt be made to free him.

The story of the other vanishing photograph is altogether more mundane.......

Less horny than billed

What is Spanish for dirty raincoat?

Picture: Pixel y Dixel

If it were not so hot, that would probably be the second most common mode of attire in Pamplona this Thursday, as a direct reaction to the first choice: the state of undress preferred by protesters against the fiesta of the Running of the Bulls.

My attention to this annual event, and the accompanying demonstration, was drawn by a small piece in Var Matin highlighting the plans of one local teenager, Rudy Schneider, from La Crau, to take part.

So far as I can tell, and from what I have read on line about the "Running of the Nudes" protest, the dirty raincoat brigade would surely derive more voyeuristic thrills from a visit to the nearest beach, since people seem to run semi-clothed or at least wearing no more than they would by the sea.

Actual nudity, Var Matin explains, is banned.

Rudy will therefore wear little shorts and a high top, making a mockery of the paper's headline: "Une jeune Crauroise va courir dénudée contre la corrida en Espagne."

She is photographed ahead of the demo with an anti-bullfighting slogan produced by the animal rights group Peta.

Stirring it

Philip Howells, I thought, gave a good send-off to the new Salut! Forum feature of my site. It was combative and open to dispute, but that is how it should be. I am grateful to him and also to all those who have taken the trouble to reply.

It goes without saying that I do not expect to agree with all or even any part of each guest writer's posting. Equally, I think I make my own views clear enough here, on the Guardian Comment is Free pages and even - if you are tempted to stray that way - my other sites. There seems no need for me automatically to wade in with ripostes of my own.

As I have just remarked to a reader who contacted me by e-mail, Salut! Forum will not develop as an invitation-only platform. Please feel absolutely free to offer a contribution and I will do my best to find a way of including it.