Salut!

Mini-skirts, sprats and hacks

Plenty of people have tales to tell about their routes into chosen careers, and this is the story of the unpromising starts made by three would-be reporters, two living hundreds of miles apart and the third thousands of miles from either of them.

My fumbling entry into journalism was based, with one necessary refinement, on the Route One strategy of a glamorous young woman who both sang at the opening night of my folk club in small-town northern England and wrote about the event for the Darlington Evening Despatch.

"So," I asked during the beer break in the crowded back room of the Red Lion in Shildon, Co Durham, "how did you get on to the paper?"

"Oh, it was quite easy," she replied. "I rang the editor, said I wanted to go and talk to him about journalism, wore my shortest mini-skirt and told him I wanted a job. Why not give him a call yourself?"
Picture: "Ken"// Red Lion before even my time

Even through the smoke and beer fumes, I could see that I might find myself lacking in one detail with such an approach, though I couldn't quite put my finger on it without being slapped or arrested.

The loudest miaow....

.....I have ever heard belonged, until today, to Ginger, tall, skinny and the office cat. Office in that it hangs around the place all day, every day and can usually be found by the simple means of looking in the direction of high-volume, piercing whines.

Then I encountered the scrawny creature in pursuit of a much smaller, skinnier cat that it proceeded to torment. It was a close run thing: the noise, not the skirmish.

But by the narrowest of margins, the louder screeches were coming from the smaller, skinnier, more persecuted of our specimens of feline Emirati life.

My photographs may not capture the strict sequence of the encounter.

Unmoved in Abu Dhabi

February 15 seems a long away when you have been waiting for the completion of a flat found in November and theoretically due to be completed before Christmas.

To my untutored eye, as I walk a shaky gangplank into the building and poke around an interior that seems to have months of work left to do, it begins to look absurdly close.

Oiks and lingerie in the City of Romance

Life and work in Abu Dhabi are busy and getting busier. The gaps between postings may well grow. So inspired by French TV babbling away in my hotel room, I will dip into the archives of a two-year blogging career that began in Paris. Before Christmas becomes an even more distant memory, or cards and tinsel go on sale for the next one, let's go back to where it all started: my very first online shot at online writing, published two days before Christmas Day 2005 and slightly modified here

Even as colleagues at the Telegraph’s London office asked me to write about Christmas shopping in Paris, I was descending into seasonal gloom about what to buy my wife.

I may have lived in the City of Romance for nearly 18 months but I remain, as she would quickly confirm, a northern oik. To a man of my generation and background, coming up with the right present for a chic Frenchwoman will always be tricky.

But I am a learning oik. I know that chip pans and foot massage machines are out, that perfume is predictable and that no, she won’t want a signed photo of the Sunderland football team. So, after looking around as sheepishly as a man loitering furtively in the Pigalle red light district, I darted into a lingerie boutique on the swish Rue St Honoré.

Petite Anglaise: mummy dearest

Whatever the nom de guerre implies, Petite Anglaise, as Catherine Sanderson is better known to her extended world family, is no Little Englander. Nor, as a Yorkshire lass, is she an especially staunch champion of the Queen's English.

But as the long awaited launch of her book approaches, she has posted a delicious item at her site about trying as best she can to stick up for her first language against the more irritating demands of her American publishers.

More of that in a minute.

No one told me it would rain

Perhaps I should have paid more attention during those geography lessons. Then I might not have been quite so surprised by the past four days of steady rain.

This has followed a spell of pleasant weather, not unlike a good English summer in case anyone remembers one of those, when long-established expats were telling us: "Make the most of it while it lasts. It's by far the nicest part of the year."

There is, I am sure, no serious risk of rainfall continuing for weeks and weeks to deny us the promised moderate levels of sunshine and warmth before we reach the fierce, unrelenting heatwave of the long summer.

Flossie's French gloss on northern ways

When the French au pair who was to become my wife arrived in Darlington - well it sounded nice if translated as ville des choux choux - one local custom perplexed her.

As I mentioned long ago at Another Place, she could not believe her eyes when she saw that the local evening newspaper was available from an open, unmanned stand.

There was also an honesty box into which, almost without fail, people conscientiously placed their coins. The French, she laughed, would be far too "crafty" to respect such a custom, and no newspaper publisher would be daft enough to trust them to.

A delightful French teacher and singer called Flossie Malavialle, of whom you can read, see and hear more at Salut! Live, has been telling me of the eye-opening aspects of her own first impressions on following in Mme Salut!'s footsteps from France to the same northern town.

No crafty dishonesty here. Stand by for a painfully honest if ultimately affectionate assessment.

Lebanese gold

When I lived in France, I shocked some British friends, and even one or two French ones, by sticking up for the Gallic approach to customer relations in shops.

Everyone else seemed to have had appalling encounters with surly or downright rude serveurs and serveuses who clearly regarded the attentions of members of the public as an intrusion on their day.

Without pretending never to have been confronted by a curt or scowling French assistant, I had become so accustomed to polite and helpful welcomes that my only concern was to make sure I didn't forget the obligatory bonjour as I entered a store.

The same had not been true of most of my recent attempts to shop in Britain, where I became weary of the non-availability of staff and their inability, when finally located, to be of much assistance. The blank faces that so often greeted requests for gift wrapping made me long for the automatic "désirez-vous un paquet cadeau, monsieur?".

Bearing in mind that I loathe shopping in any case, and spend as little time and money doing it as possible, I am happy to report that the Abu Dhabi experience still more closely reflects the France of my rose-tinted view.

No resolutions, but........

Picture: eggplant

Salut! sometimes wishes: There was a resolution it could make and have a hope of keeping

Salut! strongly wishes:
It had not chosen Virgin Atlantic to travel to India

Salut! forlornly wishes:
Ealing, once the "Queen of Boroughs", was not now full of £1 shops

Salut! half wishes:
The rest of the world cared as little as the French about the intimate lives of their leaders

Salut! does not especially wish:
It could more readily discern the difference in quality between a 2001 Château Bellisle Mondotte Grand Cru at £34 (with help of voucher from sister) and a basic Lussac St Emilion at £6

Salut! really wishes:
All restaurants were as good as the Blue Elephant in London

Salut! never wishes:
A slow death on anyone, despite clear provocation in certain cases

Salut! sincerely wishes:
Everyone else a happy new year and invites them to add to the wish list