Salut!

Your chance to win...

Is there anyone in the English-speaking world who has never received a breezy letter from the splendidly named Tom Champagne, informing them - if memory serves - that they have successfully completed two of the three steps needed to win rich pickings from the Reader's Digest?

Unfortunately, step one was having a letterbox, step two opening good old Tom's letter. That still left somewhat long odds against collecting one of the wonderful cash-or-kind prizes on offer.

This is not to say that no one ever won. Happy faces of past winners were always included in the accompanying bumf. But the real purpose of Tom's cheery approach was to twist your arm on this or that book or other item Reader's Digest was trying to flog. You could still enter the competition without making a purchase, but these entries were to be made in distinctive No envelopes setting you apart as someone with the audacity to turn down self-evidently desirable goods and still expect a windfall.

Needless to say, I fell for it time and again when younger and sillier, ending up with all manner of unwanted books without the least hint of a prize. Oh, there may have been the odd consolation, cheapo trinkets of some sort designed to reassure you that there really were winners. But my status as a non-millionaire was never threatened.

Winners, proper winners, there must undoubtedly be. Tom's job was - is? - simply to make it look as if you had a real chance of becoming one, too.

Science and Salut!

An important day for Salut!, of which more in a minute, and an important evening for Roger Highfield, a valued former colleague who has just left The Daily Telegraph to become the editor of New Scientist.

As the Telegraph's science editor, Roger (seen above at his party at what seemed to be the bottom of a lift shaft at the Royal Institution HQ in Mayfair) was a class act.

He knew his stuff, and also how to make it accessible to a mainstream audience. If his explanations sometimes left news editors confused enough to disturb his Sundays for simplification of some story he'd left over for Monday's edition, that probably said more about the news editor's knowledge than anything else.

My own record as a student of science is a particularly sorry one. Once, my school inexplicably decided to mark the end-of-year General Science exam out of 45, then double each pupil's score and add on five to obtain a percentage.

With apologies to readers who may have heard this tale before, the school's bizarre marking strategy meant that no boy could get higher than 95 per cent. This was tough on the 45-out-of-45ers. It was no less tough, in the manner applied, on the one pupil who couldn't get beyond nought out of 45.

Can a wounded cheetah cub cheat death?

From the exploits of one daughter to those of another. In her latest dispatch from Africa, Christelle Randall brings the first part of her wildlife escapade to an end with a moving tale of parting: participants in the project, naturally, but also a cheetah and one or more of her cubs. And for those poor American colleagues at my newspaper in Abu Dhabi, for whom my formal ban of trivial use of the word "awesome" is so hard to bear, this ought to be a most heartwarming posting....

The second part of my South African wildlife expedition is over.

Last Friday we departed the Karongwe game reserve and said goodbye to all the animals we had been studying for the past five weeks.

Our last week was not without drama, however. One of the big cats we had been focusing on at Karongwe was a female cheetah called Savannah who was accustomed to humans. So much so that on drives once located we would be allowed to jump off the trucks and “walk in” to see her with one of the GVI staffers (armed) and watch from 10 metres away.

The best thing about this was that Savannah had three adorable cubs all only a few months old. We could have spent hours and hours watching their frolics and by the end of the five weeks we were familiar with each one and their different characteristics.

They were so friendly and inquisitive that the staffer with us often had to speak firmly to them in a bid to stop them coming too close. Not because they were dangerous but with their mother being so relaxed, it was important they still learnt that humans were not to be fully trusted for fear of them coming into trouble in the future.

Baby love

This beautiful picture of Nathalie and her baby Maya was taken by a friend just before mum and infant left hospital.

The rest show variously Nathalie, her beau Marvin, their newborn baby and her parents (Mme Salut has been described by one of the golfing Wags, who is a close friend of Nathalie's sister Christelle as the most glamorous granny she has seen).

No one has so far said M Salut is the most glamorous grandfather.

Maya now faces all the struggles of childhood: whether to support her dad's Newcastle Utd (which would at least given her a laugh or two) or her grandfather's Sunderland; which of her four possible countries to support at international level (England, Trinidad, the Seychelles or France); whether to be a tomboy or girlie; what to make of financial meltdown and Gordon Brown's leadership.

Long distance love

UPDATE TWO: Quarter English, quarter French, quarter Seychellois(e), quarter Trinidadian, Maya entered the world tonight at a whopping 9lb 8oz. Congrats to Nathalie and Marvin, and to Maya. Mum and baby fine. More pictures will appear in due course.......

UPDATE? My flight is at some ghastly hour of the morning - they'll probably serve breakfast immediately after takeoff - and as I write, inducement is in progress. But I have clearly succeeded as a father after all. From her hospital bed, Nathalie tells me she just hopes it's all over - with Pip's robust entry into the world - in time for her to be able to catch Chelsea v Man Utd on the box come Sunday. "Mon dieu!" said Mme Salut. "Seems to run in the family."

Two daughters, two headaches. Tomorrow night I jump on a London-bound plane from Abu Dhabi in the hope that by the time I land - if not even before takeoff - I will be a grandfather. Nathalie's baby, unofficially named Pip, is 10 days overdue already as I write.

Boy or girl? No one yet knows, and I think we'll all settle for safe delivery and healthy mother and baby.

In with the old

Before Salut!, there was what I now call Old Salut!. Same blog, different home. The move from Blogspot to Typepad was intended as an upgrade, since I was persuaded by my friend and web guru Craig McGinty that it was worth paying a little for the enhanced presentation and additional features.

The idea was that everything posted at Old Salut!, from its inception in Oct 2006 until the changeover last year, would be transferred to this, the new site.

But not quite everything came with me, as I shall explain.

First let me remind you that Salut! mark two was born on April 16 2007, in my den in the south of France, located somewhere beneath what you see above. I had no way of knowing, incidentally, that a year to the day later, I'd be thousands of miles away, working on the first edition of a brand new newspaper, The National, in the Middle East.

This is how I announced the creation of the new site:

Welcome to Salut!'s new home.

I hope and believe that regular readers will quickly see the wisdom of this move. You will still find most, if not all, of what I do here back at its original location but this is where the site's development will be concentrated.

Your thoughts on the change are warmly invited. Until further notice, it is entirely up to you to post comments to either site, to both of them or to neither.

Floods up north, rotten food down south

River Wear in flood, Durham
Picture: dkodigital

Back in the humidity and heat of Abu Dhabi, though it has been dipping of late as low as 40 or 41 degrees Celsius, it is easy to forget, quite quickly, recent exposure to the unrelenting wetness of the UK.

Coming across a striking set of photographs by Dave, who uploads his photographs at Flickr under the username dkodigital and kindly allows my use of them, soon took my mind back to getting utterly drenched, also by the Wear, nearly a fortnight ago.

Some Salut! readers have already clicked on my column at The National in which I expanded on the passing reference made here about the experience. They'll know that the combined miseries of the weekend - all that rain, of course, but also seeing Sunderland walloped by Man City and then having to return to Abu Dhabi amid breaking news that oil-rich investors here had bought City - were compounded by a failure to get a decent Indian meal while at home.

Taylor made blogging

What the blogosphere will make of it, few can tell. Bill Taylor has become a blogger.

For those who have missed the last few years, Bill has been lurking around lots of other people's blogs, bringing to them everything from brilliant wit and a raging passion for Canada and France to skilled putdowns and a dodgy outlook on penal issues.

A moderator of the Daily Telegraph blogs remarked that he was the only regular poster of comments who made her laugh out loud. Colin Berry, a blogger based in Antibes, France (and an equally prolific leaver of blog comments), with whom Bill frequently locked horns) declared him, in so many words, a cyber lout.

But mark this. Bill will tomorrow embark on an 8,000km round trip from Toronto to Los Angeles in a Hyundai Accent, described as the cheapest car you can buy in Canada.

Simon Cowell of the bush: snappier than crocs

Christelle Randall observes the progress of a young leopard released into the wild after months in quarantine with teeth trouble, faces up to a small crocodile while white water rafting - and feels the sharp tongue of a sarky guide...

The couple of weeks that have passed since my last posting have given me plenty to write about as so much happens on almost every day.

Our past week has been been devoted to Shiluwene focus. I have already written about a young male leopard that has been housed in a quarantine because of teeth problems.

The reserve manager at Karongwe was able to persuade some of the wealthier farmers to invest money in his rehabilitation programme which has included extensive dental surgery and hefty quarantine costs.

Had he not done this, Shiluwene would have died. So after a number of months, he was ready to be released back into the wild last week and it was considered such a good story that Animal Planet were down to film until the last minute.

They had to cancel due to insurance problems. But as expedition members, we have been very fortunate in being able to shadow his rehabilitation by night and monitor how successful he is in the wild: whether he is hunting, what he is hunting and how he is handling other leopards and predators.

Calais to Abu Dhabi....bienvenue

A warm welcome to all readers of the Calais Guide, a site with which I have today exchanged links.

The first surprise on reaching Salut! for the first time may have been that the first items have nothing to do with France but concern a birthday party in Sunderland and a daughter's adventures in Africa.

Not until you reach the item about love and war, resistance and collaboration, will you find anything on France. And even that concerns events at the other end of the country from the Channel ports.

However, the curious visitor to this site will easily find a route to the large number of postings about France. There is a category headed Salut Huit-trois, which can be seen by scrolling down the lefthand sidebar, which deals with my life in the Var - where I spent nine months until moving to Abu Dhabi late in 2007.