Image: aeneastudioIf you came here earlier, forgive the appalling string of typos in what was a hastily uploaded posting, all done in spite of Typepad's best efforts to make the blogger's life currently, for some technical reason I have yet the fathom, a nightmare. And thanks to my friend Dumdad for his free sub-editing ...
Where, or more to the point whether, they all fit into one piece is something on which even I am unsure.
By way of a taster, though, in case it tempts you to read on, I shall talk about the French elections, Boris's win in London (opening up a deep split among Salut! writers) and two items from the Var-Matin.
In the end, the presidential race was rather enjoyable, the quality and even at times excitement of the contest growing stronger once the also-rans were beaten on April 22.
Of course they were not entirely eliminated from the reckoning after all. For all Nicolas Sarkozy's relentless courting of Marine Le Pen's 18 per cent vote from the first round, she announced as expected that she would vote blank. And since the number of abstentions and spoilt papers greatly exceeded the margin between Sarko and the winner, François Hollande, we must assume many of those far right voters followed suit.
That was one failure of second-round Sarkozy strategy. That same relentless pursuit of the Front National, unedifying in the extreme, cost the président-sortant any hope of the endorsement of François Bayrou, a centrist who had previously said he preferred Hollande the man but Sarkozy the politician. He was so disgusted that he declared he would vote socialist, and we can but wonder how many of his people - nine per cent in the first round - did likewise.
So in the end, Sarkozy had clawed back a fair chunk of Mr Hollande's lead but not enough. He has the consolation, along with the ministers with whom he shared his final cabinet meeting today, of knowing that a consequence of Mr Hollande's pledge to cut presidential and ministerial pay means they will be paid quite a bit more than the incoming regime during the six months when salaries are maintained, a sort of French political equivalent of the parachute payments paid to relegated Premier League clubs.
Am I pleased with the outcome? Broadly, yes. The break with the status quo, assuming it survives the economic stringencies forced by grim French and eurozone finances, is to be welcomed. Far from Hollande being grey, though that is the appearance, his presidency promises to make life in France lively if hazardous.
The clash at the top of Salut! Towers arises from the pleasure I took in hearing of the election news from the other side of the Channel.
Pete Sixsmith, who writes with great wit, knowledge and imagination at Salut! Sunderland, finds Boris Johnson appalling, a view if anything confirmed by his reading of Sonia Purnell's biography. I don't, which will surprise those aware that I am far from being a Tory.
In truth, I do rather dislike Ken, not with any great passion but enough to make it likely that I would have spoilt my paper if voting in London and, while unable on tribal grounds to register a Conservative vote, wish for a Boris win.
Boris, too, brings a breath of fresh air to humdrum modern politics. We were colleagues at the Telegraph but go back even further: we met on one of his very first assignments as a Times reporter, at a P&O strike in Dover, and he caused great amusement by remarking to the more grizzled hacks: ''How sweet. You're all writing in shorthand.''
Image: Patrick van IJzendoornOur paths crossed often enough in the ensuing years. We strolled together through the churchyard at Drumcree, the Northern Ireland village where Protestants insisted each year on trying to stage an Orange march with supreme provocation through a Catholic area. At one point, a rough-looking man with abundant tattoos suddenly strode towards us. I soon realised the roughness was no illusion; this was a man widely blamed for a large number of sectarian murders.
But any apprehension was swept away when instead of producing a gun or baseball bat, or even screaming F*** the Pope (and the media) into our faces, he offered a sturdy handshake, not - oddly enough - to the already recognisable Boris but to a man from the Guardian by our side. They'd met before.
In any event, he was good company and made me feel super efficient by filing his ''think piece'' long after my news story was safely transmitted.
Much later, we bumped into each other on a flight - pleb class - to Zurich for the Fifa vote on where the 2018 and 2022 World Cups would be held. We coincidentally had seats on either side of the aisle but in the same row and he chatted amiably after introducing me to an aide, with great flattery, as a ''Telegraph institution''. Or was it ''an old Telegraph hack who ought to have been institutionalised''?
None of which necessarily makes him a good mayor of London, let alone a good future PM. Stephen Glover may well have been right to say in the Mail that if he had to cross the Sahara with just one water bottle, he'd choose David Cameron above Boris as his travelling companion, fearing the latter would ''take more than his fair share of the water or steal off with it, albeit in a most engaging way''.
But I like characters and, in a world with remarkably few, Boris is one.
That leaves Jonny and François Hollande's dad.
Let us start with Georges H, farther along the Riviera where, at 89, he leads a life interrupted mainly by the impertinent attentions of the media.
The article in Var-Matin was flagged on page one as ''our meeting'' with the president-elect's father in Cannes. Some meeting: the journalist and photographer seem to have done little more than snatch a photo and a couple of quotes after accosting the old chap on his way home from a morning constitutional and did not even have time to raise the dodgy (far right, Algérie Française) political skeletons.
He seems to have nodded or shaken his head at the right moments but did have one point of substance to make: ''Sarkozy has given a poisoned chalice to my son (my translation of making him a cadeau empoisonné).'' Beyond trusting young François to put France right - ''he has plenty of diplomas'' - that was about it before the door was closed politely but firmly in my confrères' faces.
Jonny? My boules-playing, rugby-loving neighbour mentions him nearly every time we speak, and he means Jonny Wilkinson not Johnny Hallyday. The English rugbyman is a great favourite at Toulon; the back page of today's paper was devoted to a rare but distinctly un-Georges Hollande style interview.
It is always interesting to see how other Britons spend their lives down here. Jonny loves it, thinks of every day as being on holiday and has worked almost as hard on improving his French - he already had enough to read thrillers before movng to France - as he famously does on the training ground.
He came across as a decent, likeable sportsman genuinely grateful for the good luck and consequently great life his talent and application have brought him. And he spoke intriguingly about that retirement from international rugby, feeling isolated from the squad that played in New Zealand by his ''old school'' attachment to values many sporting heroes no longer feel have any place in today's world.
No great revelations, just a thoroughly good read which helped me in my own morning battle, with plenty of application but little natural skill, to climb 120 or more steps to avoid the winding hillside road after buying my Var-Matin.
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