Salut!

India (1): of muck and brass

Dirt, smell and noise. Elephants and cows, camels and boars jostle for space on crowded roads while the tiger vanishes from the jungle.

Wherever westerners pause, gangs of angel-faced children, armed with useless trinkets and multilingual command of the stock phrases crucial to a street seller's trade, are ready for them, Fagin figures lurking in the background to collect the proceeds.

Delhi belly, the guide book warns, is almost inevitable. The hassling will worsen when we reach the Ganges.

Not, you may think, a promising holiday snapshot.

Out with the old: a Fleet Street lament

Few jewellers would think to put a gang of thieves in charge of security, and it is unlikely that the average china shop owner takes a raging bull to work.

Listening to the speechmaking at yet another Daily Telegraph leaving party, I thought of two possible exceptions to the rule: the jeweller contemplating an insurance scam and the crockery seller who wants a complete clear out of stock so he can replace it with plastic.

The popular view among journalists and, I suspect, some observant readers is that a chilling new regime is intent on destroying most of what was good about the DT, a goodness that was evident even to those who disagreed with every editorial opinion expressed by the paper.

But many more decent journalists need to be purged before the supposed transition from great newspaper to soulless, undistinguished rag becomes a reality.

Holiday from hell, and a glorious Salut! milestone

Cripes, there was a short cut!
Image: tenbon

With the unwitting help of Sir Richard Branson, Salut! is taking a holiday, its first for rather a long time.

The destination is northern India, with a few days in Nepal at the end. But it is fair to say the itinerary - Abu Dhabi-London-India-London-Abu Dhabi – did not spring from the pages of the Kelly Scott guide to good travel planning.

Observant readers may recall that in her role as newsdesk secretary, serving a dozen or more Telegraph news editors, Kelly was generally regarded as the person really in charge of the place.

Needless to say, these professional failings were quickly spotted by the new mob, who promptly fired her for being, in the words of her share of the spoof page prepared in honour of assorted departing souls, "far too efficient for far too long".

Kelly would have organised my journey with a little more care. “Look at the map, Col," she’d have said, though she might have put it more bluntly. "Isn’t that India just to the right of where you're starting from?”

There were a couple of reasons for the route choices I made, or rather neglected to alter, but they are not convincing enough ones to repeat here.

Conrad Black and Iranian women's lib: strange bedfellows

Picture: kosoof ...scary women police break up the demo in which Delaram was arrested

As my former boss Conrad Black sits on his Palm Beach terrace taking his daily tipple of "good French white wine", he is unlikely to cast his thoughts in the direction of Teheran and Delaram Ali.

Why should he? Lord Black of Crossharbour, as he styles himself in memory of the Isle of Dogs, to which he moved the Daily Telegraph 20 years ago, is more preoccupied by what he regards as one monstrous injustice - his own - to worry about another faced by a young woman in a far off land.

On Nov 30, he will be sentenced for fraud and obstruction of justice, recognisable crimes in any sane jurisdiction. Ali (pictured below) has already been condemned and faces 10 lashes and 30 months in jail for the non-crime of protesting peacefully - check that last link; it takes you to a remarkable photo essay - in favour of women's equality.

There is no true link, of course. But I have followed the Ali case because I now live in the Gulf, a whole lot nearer Iran than Florida, while my natural fascination with the Black trial has been deepened by conversations with new Canadian colleagues who also once worked for him.

And I find myself feeling sympathy for them both.

Secret blogger, special allure

Who is La Bellina Mammina?

I can reveal only this. According to Dumdad, my good friend and former fellow Englishman in Paris (the "former" in my description relates to geography since he is still there and still English), she writes delightfully about family life in Singapore.

But she does so behind that rare cyberspace phenomenon, the hidden blog. Mortals not in the loop discover this when they attempt to share the joy Dumdad takes in La Bellina's musings, only to run into a solid Blogspot wall.

Tantalising snippets can be found by searching the name of the blog - THE (MAD) HOUSEHOLD OF LA BELLINA MAMMINA - on Google. The first reference I came across mentioned that she has three boys. Another seemed to invite internet surfers to "join us on our rollercoaster ride each day". But that is as far as you can go when trying to enter La Bellina's mad world.

A stern notice from Blogspot explains why. "This blog is open to invited readers only."

One route seemed open: logging on to the same Google account that enables me to use Gmail. Thwarted again! And put firmly in my place with these words: "It doesn't look like you have been invited to read this blog. If you think this is a mistake, you might want to contact the blog author and request an invitation."

That might appear straightforward enough. But nowhere on the page could I find any means of making that contact.

Popcorn, tapas and a night at the opera

Amateur operatic and dramatic societies had a common complaint when I worked on my first local paper.

After all the time and effort devoted by volunteers to each show, coverage of the first night would be entrusted to some bored junior reporter with little or no appreciation of culture, a pressing desire to be somewhere else and a consequent temptation to rattle off a stinker of a review.

They had a point. So when I became chief reporter of the paper's district office, I took care to send a colleague who, as an active and gifted member of such a society herself, would be writing from a position of authority.

When she too delivered an unenthusiastic write-up, the society cried foul still louder. "It was obvious she'd have a go at us," they said, "what with her belonging to a rival society."

For the opening night of a short run for Carmen at the 1,200-seater theatre in Abu Dhabi's glittering Emirates Palace hotel, Salut! Salam reverted to route one. Cub reporter days are long gone, but my reflections are still those of a know-nothing dilettante.

Camel filters

Until you work out that no Emirati is actually shown, you could be forgiven for thinking one half of this photo has it in for my theory that the people of Abu Dhabi are uncommonly attractive.

A man would say this, or at least the majority of men would, but the women look especially fetching even when you can see so little of them.

No one has ever been known to consult Salut! for fashion tips.

But this site knows what it likes and finds it easy to conclude that the design of abayas has been perfected to reach beyond self-evident discretion with an eye-catching blend of elegance and sex appeal. I also caught myself remarking the other day, in all innocence, on how handsome Emirati men seem to be.

You see proof of all this when visiting any of the big brash shopping malls, where store after store stocks the most stylish of traditional clothes. And the groups of white-clad local men and slim young women in their black robes have a distinct visual edge over gangs of hoodies and apprentice fag-ash Lils in Identikit British arcades.

Crazy driver, loony dunes

What I know about 4X4 vehicles, beyond that certain people find it impossible to negotiate the rough terrain of South Kensington or the 16th arrondissement in anything else, is a little less than would be required to make them a specialist subject on Mastermind.

But I haven't the slightest doubt that there is only so far you can make a Land Cruiser tilt.

Tossing us about in the dunes of the desert outside Abu Dhabi city, Hilal - or Crazy Driver, to use the name with which he introduced himself - somehow managed to remain short of that point.