Salut!

A dangerous beauty

It would be wrong to put too much blame on the sky. But I'll be honest and say many of the sights and sounds of this part of the south of France have seemed just a little more sinister since last week.

Photographing the glorious colour show that appeared last night as I looked out over the Varois hills, I found it impossible not to think of the turbulent weather that accounted last week for 25 souls not too far from here. That toll could yet rise higher since a few people are still unaccounted for.

I was fortunate, experiencing only the minor inconvenience of having to brush furiously to disperse gallons and gallons water as the torrential rain, for which our drainage system was simply no match, battered our home and garden. The power cut was a nuisance, too, but 20 or 30 miles away, cars were being swept along flooded streets, homes destroyed, lives lost. There was a baby flushed from a mother's arms, elderly victims trapped in their garages, people dying in their vehicles.

Friends who had stayed with us before moving on to the very part of central Var worst affected reported that all was well for them, though they had never seen such monsoon-like rainfall in many years of visiting the area.

My sympathies are with the loved ones of those who perished, and others left to rebuild their lives.

The terrible ordeal they have faced may help to explain why I looked with rather more suspicion than in the past at the superb spectacle set before me by nature in yesterday's early evening.

Come on England, but leave me to see the Cranberries

The readership of Salut! Sunderland is a lot bigger, but I suspect there is little crossover. This, then, is an adapted version of posting from that other place

Everyone has guilty secrets.

And guess what this year's menace is ... yep, the mosquito

Since I posted this item, murderous floods have swept large parts of the Var, leaving - at the last count - at least 20 dead. The menace described below is, of course, on a quite different, relatively inconsequential scale ..

Only a year or so ago, I was moaning about the papillons de nuit that had invaded our corner of the Var.

Before that, it had been the Year of the Frog.

Each year seems to bring a multitude of this or that creature intent on making life, if not miserable, a challenge.

And this year, it's our old friend the mosquito. Of course, it is the female variety - Culiseta longiareolata - we need to concern ourselves with most since (surprise, surprise) that's the one that does most of the biting, sucking, annoying.

They're all over the place, in far greater numbers than I recall from any visit (or longer stay).

In town, the Shopi supermarket apparently ran out of citronelle. A man at my wife's gym recommended geraniums in pots outside the window, and I have all manner of sprays, plug-in repellents, alleged soothing ointment and barely suppressed anger to cope with the threat.

I'm not bitten as much as I used to be. Once I woke up in Klagenfurt, the hotel window open from the night before, to count 20 or more bites. A friend tells the story of a young relative who arrived for breakfast (in France) with her face covered by her hands. When she removed them, she was hardly recognisable, such was the swelling.

In Brittany decades ago, my daughters protested when I used holiday reading matter to squash the bloody things - and yes, the adjective is appropriate - quite dead on the ceiling. But that was on the first night. By the fourth or fifth, they were begging me to be cruel.

Come on then, Salut! readers. Let me have your own moustique anecdotes - and also your remedies (with equal attention to before and after!).

With thanks to tanakawho for the first image and stahlmanddesign for the second

When sporting passion turns to racial intolerance

Photo credit: "cgo2"

"But they're not really the French national side, are they?" No, not the offensive mantra of some racist supporter of Jean Marie Le Pen's Front National, but the sort of comment you hear from all sorts of French people. The opening of the World Cup in South Africa today symbolises, in part, the long struggle to eradicate racial injustice. But how can we say racism in sport has been defeated if people - in England and elsewhere, as well as France - still wonder about the racial composition of their national teams? These reflections of mine appear in today's edition of The National, Abu Dhabi

After the French football team defeated the much-fancied Brazilians in the 1998 World Cup final, two snappy phrases became part of the legacy of a swashbuckling victory: un-deux-trois-zéro to describe the impressive scoreline and blanc-black-beur acclaiming the multiracial composition of the team.

Two Rivieras: Cinque Terre and a third world charm

If I am to be absolutely honest, the journey along the Italian Riviera was a little disappointing.

The resorts did not seem especially pretty; the sea views and landscape were less attractive than on the more striking sections of the familiar coastline of the Cote d'Azur. There was an occasional temptation to cheat and head for the autostrada, and such cheating was committed (once).

Then there was a call from our elder daughter, who was visiting her boyfriend near Rome.

Two Rivieras: a coastal odyssey

Thirty euros. The sum seems to have a certain resonance in Florence. It was what the waiter at the Scudieri restaurant in the Piazza San Giovanni made a pair of hapless tourists pay after their dog managed to knock over a teapot and cups and turn them into more pieces than the manufacturer intended.