Salut!

The Syrian civil war and Europe's wild geese

"Be a stranger to your own family."

Those were the words of a young French Muslim woman in Bordeaux, written in a card to her friend, Anissa, 22, the only daughter of an atheist Moroccan mother, and quoted by the news magazine Le Nouvel Observateur.

Anissa had converted under her friend's influence, married a man introduced to her by an imam on Skype and headed for Syria. Females, some in only their mid-teens, have increasingly answered the call of extreme Islamists to play a part in a struggle that is against the West as much against as it is against the odious Assad regime.

The women and girls may serve as child minders or wives, or - as one moderate French imam told me - provide other kinds of "support", ie of a sexual nature, to male combatants fighting with groups detached from the mainstream rebels of the Free Syrian Army, supported by the West, and instead inspired by or linked to Al Qaeda.

If these young people return, they are suspected of posing a security threat to their countries of origin. Some of the combatants not return, because they choose to pursue their lives in the Muslim world or because they die in the conflict.

Dominique Bons is one mother who has suffered the grief of caused first by the departure of both her son, and his half-brother from a subsequent marriage and then the deaths of both of them in the space of a few months. I spoke to her:

Salut!'s journey: from the Seine to the Swale, Thames, Wear - and Med

The best way of announcing a development at Salut!, it seemed to me, was to go back to the beginning.

First, the present. Look to the immediate right and you will see an invitation to become a one-year or life Friend of Salut!. No one is compelled to subscribe but all who do will be warmly welcome.

Come Dine With Me for a first pull of the pork

Courtesy: William Jones, via Flickr Commons

It may not be the sort of main course you'd serve up to fellow guests on Come Dine With Me and perhaps does not fully repay all the effort the customary preparations require.