A colleague once asked, towards the end of a newsroom night shift on which not much had happened: ''What would you do if you were on your way home and you saw a plane crash on the road a little way ahead?''
Call 999 and be what help I could, I supposed, ring the office, tell them what I knew, have a good look and start interviewing any witnesses. This was some years ago: these days, there'd be tweets to send, photos to take on the mobile phone.
''And you?'' I asked my colleague in turn. He saw things differently. A gifted reporter and writer, but with an approach shaped in his later career by distressing, horribly violent scenes he was once forced at gunpoint to witness in west Africa, he said nonchalantly: ''Find another route.''
Nothing of the sort on the minds of our friend Bill Taylor and his wife, Lesley, as they drove home in Toronto after she had been trying on some fancy dress for a Titanic party.
They came across an accident. An elderly woman had been knocked over and was trapped beneath a tram. Both Bill and Lesley are journalists, too. He left the words to her and began taking photographs. The casualty was eventually freed and taken to hospital - where I hope she is recovering - and the Toronto Star gratefully accepted its on-the-spot coverage.
It wasn't quite the same when I saw what had become of L'Atlas, a Moroccan restaurant on what is normally one of the quietest parts of the the quiet seafront of Le Lavandou. A fire - let us not mince words, an arson attack - would have done damage enough; the gas cylinder that then exploded made things a fair bit worse. Five people were injured, four of them firemen and two of those quite badly, and the fire and blast effects had spread to the neighbouring Carpe Diem and Yada restaurants.
Mme Salut happened upon the scene first and overheard the calming voice of an insurance assessor who had turned out to inspect our own chimney fire damage a year ago. He was reassuring the owner of L'Atlas, who had presumably been looking forward to some brsk trade this weekend, that an interim payment would be arranged.
Elsewhere in town, unaware of the excitement half a mile away, I separately witnessed a flurry of activity as several police officers hurried into a block of flats, perhaps to arrest or search the home of the suspect.
Later, after we had seen the sorry state of affairs at L'Atlas together, the president of the boules club stopped to chat to us.
No one gets to be the boules club president without having a finger on the pulse of local life and this one is no exception. He already knew what I would read in the next day's paper, which ran the story on three pages, including the front, with no fewer than 10 photos: a grudge was suspected, an affaire d'argent to be more specific (as Monsieur le Président was).
This was Good Friday. Three days later, the more badly hurt of the firemen are still being treated for their burns. Someone is indeed in custody; though the fire began at 7am, the man seen acting suspiciously at the scene was reported by the Var-Matin to have been under the influence of drink.
"It seems deserted for Easter,'' we remarked to Jack, the friendly waiter serving us at the Thai Pavilion; "It's windy, not very warm and the restaurants get blown up,'' he replied.
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