Salut!

Taponier, Ghesquière and French solidarity that wouldn't happen in Britain

There is a first for everything. Until yesterday, I had not learnt of any major news event from Twitter. But it was a Tweet from Hala Gorani, from the CNN international desk, that alerted me to the marvellous news that the France 3 journalists Stéphane Taponier and Hervé Ghesquière had been freed after 547 days in captivity in Afghanistan.

Ealing to Toulon, car parking rip-offs in any language (2)

Oh to be in England, far from the ferocious new long-term parking fees at Toulon-Hyères airport? Maybe yes, maybe not, as part two of my rant about grasping authority shows. Back home from France, a night at the theatre beckons - and what better than supporting local theatre? It can come at a price ...

Walking from the pleasant little suburban theatre, I thought aloud about how refreshing it had been to see a decent well-acted play without having had to trawl into the West End.

There were smiles on other faces, too, as people headed towards their cars parked nearby,

Even the sight of what can only be described as a gang of traffic wardens, prowling the street dressed in no-nonsense uniform, failed to break the spell.

Ealing to Toulon, car parking rip-offs in any language (1)

Toulon-Hyères airport is right on the Mediterranean coast, closer to Hyères than Toulon and, in most respects, a delight to use. A thousand miles away, Ealing has beautiful parks to remind us that however hard the borough has tried to go down the tubes, it hasn't quite succeeded. In both locations, officialdom has found ways to fleece motorists ...

Look at the map of France and you see lots of smallish cities to which you can get low-cost flights from Britain, thanks in no small measure to Ryanair (crikey, they won't believe someone has mentioned them in positive terms).

Premature French spouting off about sprout seeds from England

Image: Natalie S

If I had any interest in the Suffolk company of Thompson and Morgan, I would today be inclined to throttle Frédéric Lefebvre, France's secretary of state for consumer affairs.

Widespread dismay followed Germany's recklessly premature, and wrong, finger-pointing at Spanish cucumber growers for the (very German) outbreak of E coli that has so far killed 44 people and made thousands ill.

But Mr Lefebvre felt no need for caution after 10 people fell sick after eating rocket and mustard vegetable sprouts at a country fair near Bordeaux.

Two are said to have the same strain of the disease as has been detected in Germany.

French officer in Obama row: passport to ruin or bliss?

Je Wanda Magazine

If the regional director of French customs had done a little research before having a souvenir snap taken with Barack Obama's passport, he might have realised that presidential touchiness on such matters goes back a long way.

Even before he was elected to the White House, President Obama, or aides on his behalf, expressed anger that US State Department contract staff had imprudently - or was it impudently? - inspected his passport records three times in two months, "an outrageous breach of security and privacy".

Driven to despair: France, road safety and death after midnight

<Image: Jean-Louis Zimmermann

In the Riviera town of Sainte-Maxime, a 69-year-old Swiss woman made the mistake of assuming she would be safe using a pedestrian crossing, albeit at midnight, and the mistake proved a fatal one.

She died in hospital two hours after being mown down by a car whose driver, in the words of Var-Matin, continued on her way without troubling herself over the casualty's fate.

The Daily Telegraph, redundancies and a French exception

If The Daily Telegraph were Le Télégraphe, its owners would be in for an uncomfortable trip to the French labour courts. Last week, a distinguished DT reporter, Richard Savill, became the latest casualty of obsession with cost-cutting.

In France, making an employee redundant after lengthy, impeccable service brings painful financial consequences; Richard's age, 55, would be an aggravating factor.

When the Telegraph got rid of me, a French lawyer recommended legal action in France, where I worked and paid taxes. It won't be easy, he said, but the brothers Barclay will almost certainly end up paying you a lot more than they bargained for. In my case, the advice came a week or so too late. And Richard is in Bristol, not Paris ...

Pardon my French: would a knock on the head make it better?

Has anyone ever gone into a coma, or been given general anaesthetic, and woken up speaking the language of Molière without trace of an English accent or gross errors of grammar, structure or pronunciation? If so, I want that coma or surgery.

Such a linguistic transformation may not be utterly impossible.

A quick internet search revealed the case, reported just over a year ago, of a 13-year-old Croatian girl who came out of a 24-hour coma with fluent German.

John Galliano: drunk and incapable (of reasonable behaviour)?

Don't worry. Salut! is not turning into a news site. But this (my report in today's edition* of The National, Abu Dhabi) is an inevitable sequel - with more to come - to the piece that appeared here after John Galliano's arrest.

It is interesting to note the thoughts of one half of the couple Galliano is alleged to have abused in February; he has told the French media he believes the designer was sick rather than racist
...

The troubled designer John Galliano, a fallen star of haute couture, will stand trial in Paris today accused of subjecting a couple to an alcohol-fuelled stream of antisemitic abuse.

At a time when he should have been preparing to present new creations to next month's Paris fashion show, the 50-year-old couturier will instead be required to explain his actions during a dispute in La Perle, a bar in the city's fashionable Marais district.

If convicted of using insulting language based on religious affiliation, race or ethnicity, he could be sentenced to up to six months in prison or fined €22,500.

Made, mostly, in France so back to basics for Salut!

Not so far short of five years ago, Salut! made its modest appearance as the Paris-based blog with which I had decided to continue a habit formed in the second half of my stint as The Daily Telegraph's correspondent in France.

The Telegraph had asked for a French blog for their own site. Having got it, they lavishly praised it and declared that this, in part, was the way forward for newspapers. My blog was consistently among the best-read of all those published, and the regular postings that appeared there were in addition to all I did for the paper itself.

And then they fired me or, to be more polite, made me redundant. So I took away my blog and, to some extent, its readers.