Salut!

Spice and burgers, but no wine list, in London's halal smokehouses

Faraz Ahmad is a charming, friendly Anglo-Pakistani businessman with a flair for growth, innovation and success. I managed to interest The National* in the story of him and his Meat and Shake halal burger bars. I never minded alcohol-free dining when I lived in Abu Dhabi, provided the food was as good as it was at some Indian and Persian places I recall. There was plenty of opportunity to drink with meals at home, courtesy of my little black liquor licence allowing me to buy as much as I wanted up to a maximum monthly spend (the allowance determined by salary), or in the international hotels.

Faraz admits that the idea of glass of fine wine with a steak dinner intrigues him, but he's happy with his abstinence and the response of customers, Muslim and non-Muslims alike, to his booze-free catering ...

Salut! wishes you all - or nearly all - a happy Christmas

My daughters, Christelle and Nathalie, knew how to please me this Christmas ...

There are always exceptions. I do not dislike many people in the world - two or three people at most that I know, a few others more famous/infamous that I do not.

Otherwise, I wish all readers a very happy Christmas and a wonderful new year.

If you wish to see more of what I write, navigate this site or consult the following:

* Articles for The National, Abu Dhabi at http://www.thenational.ae/authors/colin-randall

* My seriously upmarket football website: salutsunderland.com

* badly neglected sites about the North East - salutnorth.com - and folk music, salutlive.com.

Joyeuses fetes!

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I spent a couple of eye-opening days in Brussels, talking to a wide range of people from government officials to youth project leaders, from ordinary residents to activists. My thanks to all the people named and quoted in the article, which covers two pages of The National today* and to others who gave their time and thoughts but could not, for good reason, be identified ...

From a distance, nothing sets Les Beguines apart from countless other bars in the Belgian capital of Brussels.

In the arched windows of the austere building on the corner of a quiet street, one poster features croissants and cappuccino while others depict Toto, a Belgian cartoon hero.

On closer inspection, the bar is locked and deserted. Official notices explaining why this is the case have been posted on the front door and one window by the mayor of Molenbeek, a poor, immigrant-dominated area only a few Metro stops from the handsome city centre.

Les Beguines, formerly owned by one of the Paris suicide bombers, Brahim Abdeslam, and managed by his brother Salah, was closed by official decree less than two weeks before the ISIL-claimed attacks on November 13. Police raids in August had revealed traces of hallucinatory drugs, partly smoked cannabis joints and other evidence of narcotics activity.

The Calais migrants. Endeavour and persistence, squalor and hope

This is what The National* calls The Long Read, that is to say the substantial cover story of the weekly Review section. It results from time I spent at the migrants' encampment outside Calais but I shall not make The Long Read even longer with a protracted introduction ...

Near the entrance to the vaccination tent within the ungainly sprawl of the migrants’ camp at the French port of Calais, Mohammed Shafi Sedeguy gathers his six children around him in a huddle.

Calais is a long way from the dangers and deprivation he remembers of life in Afghanistan. For now, the family, also including Mohammed’s wife, Mahboba, is safe.

A team from the French charity L’Auberge des Migrants (Shelter for Migrants) found them on the road leading from the railway station, a sodden, dishevelled group walking in the pouring rain. “We got them into a hotel for a few nights until a tent with heating was available at the camp,” says volunteer Rachel Hunter.

Not a Native New Yorker: the final chapter before paradise is paved

All good things ...

In what Bill Taylor has decided should be the last of his appetising morsels of New York nostalgia, he recounts the twists and turns of a long road trip out of the city in the Cadillac you see above (the picture, he thinks, was taken in Indiana). See all items in the series at http://www.francesalut.com/not-a-native-new-yorker/ - and we won't charge you a dollar-and-a-half just to see 'em ..

Don’t it always seem to go that you don’t know where you’ve got till you’ve gone…

Joni Mitchell may or may not forgive the paraphrase but, either way, it was time for a break from New York. Since I’d taken up residence in Manhattan, I’d seen very little of the United States other than the small Pennsylvania town my girlfriend (and wife-to-be) Lesley hailed from and the small Connecticut city where she went to university. And the view from the buses and trains that took me there.