Salut!

A bas le travail !

When the unions say three million people turned out in protests against the French government's trifling plans to reform the pension system, and officials say it was fewer than a million, you can safely bet both are lying (or mistaken).

Teresa Lewis: US justice on trial

By the time we wake up in Europe tomorrow, Teresa Lewis will probably be dead.

Monette: un chat du monde

For a moment - quite a long time in a cat's life - Monette, as ungovernable as France itself, thought Eurotunnel had suddenly imposed a €46 charge for something she most definitely didn't want to do: go to England. Her share of the last crossing she'd made was €0/£0. But that trip was in the other direction and was free because there are no controls (no one cares whether or not a pet leaving the UK is healthy). Deprived of an opportunity for a little feline rant, Monette decided to introduce herself more generally ...

Giverny: summer, 2004 There must be more to life than this! Stuck here with eight brothers and sisters competing for the measly food they serve us. I mean, the place is nice enough; you see lots of humans passing by, coming and going.

Not sure why they all come. I heard something about the house and gardens of Monet being across the road and that he was a famous painter, but it doesn't mean much to me.

When a rapist steals his victim's love of France

If you work as a reporter for 40 years, and spend part of that time in the courts, you tend to come across a lot of unpleasant characters.

Rapists come in many shapes and sizes, and it goes without saying that some rapes are significantly nastier than others, but it is probably not unfair to say anyone who forces himself sexually on someone else passes the unpleasantness test with ease.

A death in David Cameron's family, and one of life's odder coincidences

The view from Le Club

When you spend part of the year in a small resort tucked away some distance from more celebrated Riviera destinations, you settle - or think you've settled - for a quiet life of little interest to the outside world.

Since returning from Abu Dhabi, however, I have encountered a series of events attracting more than passing attention.

Nice and handy for the Alps

Should I start with the wolves? No, they were in "semi-liberty", said the leaflet, which of course also means semi-captivity. So they can howl and wait.

The gendarmes who kept children out of Nazi hands

From the high but trembling moral ground of a Britain that never had to confront the events leading to capitulation and collaboration in France, we express our disgust at French officials who conspired with the Nazis to send Jews to the deaths in the Holocaust.

The words of Amos

Mike Amos is a much-honoured English regional journalist. He's the sole reason I gained a start in journalism, whether journalism thinks that was a good or bad thing, and I still think of him decades later as my boss. Bill Taylor salutes Mike's 45 years of service ...

I remember when my dad turned 80, he looked at me in some bewilderment and said: “I don’t feel any different inside. . . in my mind I haven’t grown old.”

He had, of course. As do we all, if we’re lucky. I’m 62 and Colin, if he’s not there already, is closing in on it (there - editor). I don’t know about him but I think of myself as being about 27.

That end-of-the-season feeling: the naked truth

August is done, the 83 of the Var is once more the most common matriculation on the road and the resorts have a distinct end-of-season feel.

Does it mean that on the isle of Levant, a ridge measuring 8km x 1.2km opposite Le Lavandou, the solitary municipal police officer, Dominique Poey, will be able to relax again?

It rather depends on whether the nudists who have been making Officer Poey's working life a little more lively of late depart for the mainland or retreat to designated naturist areas of the island.