Salut!

Expat life: No End to bleak midwinters

Salut! is off to see in the new year in France. Or at least he hopes he is. Please bear in mind that this was written mainly for people living in warmer climes and/or reading The National, Abu Dhabi ...

Any day now, I hope to make the simple drive from London to the coast, put the car on a train and sit back to be whisked to France.

On leaving the Channel Tunnel at Coquelles, I will take safe, fast roads to the city of Le Mans to join relatives for le réveillon, the New Year’s Eve feast.

Bah humbug be damned: bonnes Fêtes et à bientôt

My impersonation of Scrooge was the phrase I tapped into Flickr (creative commons, of course, to avoid testy objections).

This was one of the images that popped up. So thanks, for the second time this week, to Kevin Dooley and his Flickr pages. Another appeared a few days ago at Salut! Sunderland.

But the Salut! message is not bah humbug. I wish all readers, well nearly all readers, a very happy Christmas, whether or not it is also merry, and a terrific new year.

Back as soon as I can be bothered to put up this week's My Word column, which maintains this week's AZ theme over at Salut! Sunderland.

Expat life: observing the warlords of Whitehall and Washington

On behalf of the East/West column of The National, Salut! joins people of influence, and the odd luvvie, at a West End screening of a film about political intrigue and bad language that may figure in the coming Baftas ...

It is the time of year when film industry people start talking up their contenders for the poor man’s Oscars. Private screenings are held in the hope of helping those with votes or influence decide which films, filmmakers and stars should collect British Baftas.

Expat life: minarets and mischief

Forgive me for returning to France and national identity for this week's East West column in The National, Abu Dhabi. It's an important debate and, a few evenings ago, a French acquaintance answered criticism of the timing ("cynically close to regional elections") by pointing out that on that basis, the debate would never happen since there are always elections of one kind or another looming in France ...

The best part of a recent return to Paris was not strolling through the narrow streets of the Left Bank or old stamping grounds on the other side of the Seine. Nor was it the excellent meals I enjoyed at restaurants (chosen carefully; it is possible to eat badly) or at the tables of friends.

Do we get a good press? 1: The Daily Telegraph

Let me introduce a newspaper-by-newspaper series of Salut! articles on the state of the UK national press. I have been back in the UK for three months after living abroad since the spring of 2004. What have I made of my reacquaintance with the British press? Which titles deserve to flourish and which would be no loss if they failed even to survive? The series will offer no more than one person's view and I would be interested to hear what others think ...

STOP PRESS: lots of water under the bridge since this article appeared: see this update - The brave new world of newspapers: engineers to replace quality writing

Where better to start than with The Daily Telegraph?

In the archived section of the Telegraph website's blogs by former foreign correspondents could be found, until recently, the postings I contributed online while also trawling France for news and features for the print edition. Individual items still respond to searches, but the section has either disappeared or been shunted into out-of-the-way sidings.

The blurb accompanying my photograph was altered after my departure to say I had worked for the paper for 28 years, which was nearly right. It was 29 years, a term that ended abruptly in September 2006.


So how has the paper fared without me?

Expat life: the pickpocket's progress

Traveller's tales from Paris. Dinner chez Dumdad involved a trek to the outer reaches of the capital. The real test, as explained in my East/West column in The National, Abu Dhabi, was getting there with all belongings intact ...

For the first time in my life, I punched a number into my mobile phone and announced: “I’m on a bus.”

In recent times, the equivalent call from a train has come to be seen as a moderately serious social faux pas, one I have committed only when feeling guilty about how late home I’ll be. The evidence of my eyes and ears, since my return to Europe from a trainless part of the Middle East, is that people have taken the hint that these calls cause great irritation to fellow passengers.

Pour vous, qu’est-ce qu’être français/ the meaning of being French

And off I went to Paris to find out.

There is a lot more to France than its capital, of course. But I had to make a choice of where to go in the short time available, and there was a keystone public meeting planned for the Ecole Militaire close to Eiffel Tower.

Even so, the important part of my work was done beyond the end of the Metro line 1, at the grand mosque in Paris's fifth arrondissement and on the phone to a French-Algerian academic and a Cameroonian prefect. Not to mention a spot of research at home and on the badminton court in Chiswick, west London.

Amanda Knox: caution and consolation

This is an old posting, brought to life by the current appeal - and some new comments ... be aware that it relates to the end of the original trial and has not been updated

Life this weekend must seem pretty grim for Amanda Knox, the American student sentenced to 26 years in jail by at Italian court for the murder of a young British woman, Meredith Kercher.

In America, there have been howls of indignant rage at the guilty verdict, the implication being that Knox was convicted on insubstantial evidence in a Mickey Mouse trial. I shall return to the respective merits of American and Italian justice a little later.

Expat life: changing places

Peter Crouch is a long, stringy and fairly successful footballer who is better known for his goalscoring feats than for classic good looks. He found himself a stunning Wag all the same. His splendid response, when asked what he would have been had he not been a footballer ("a virgin") was my inspiration for this week's East/West column in The National, Abu Dhabi ...

Name a job in the UAE - or anywhere else, for that matter, now that the column is being reproduced here - you would like to have if you were not already employed in your chosen career. Surely only those supremely contented in their work never wonder what else they might do to earn a living.

Rumours of me being difficult to please are greatly exaggerated.

In Abu Dhabi, I would gladly have accepted one of a number of roles