Salut!

Salut!'s seasonal greetings: happy Christmas/joyeuses fêtes

There could be few more suitable images to illustrate my Christmas message to all readers of Salut! (I say "all" but my friend and Salut! contributor Bill Taylor's correctly suggests that I surely don't offer warm greetings to everyone I know).

The photo shows my great pal Pete Sixsmith winding down after another hard day's work as Santa in the North East. It is not strictly true to say he accepts the work as a means of avoiding having to watch Sunderland play, though that is certainly one of the perks.

I decided Pete's photo so brilliantly captured the spirit of the season that it should appear with my greetings at each of the Salut! sites: this one, Salut! Sunderland (footie), Salut! Live (folk music/folk-rock) and Salut! North (North-eastern nostalgia).

The curse of mobile phones. For once Macron's control freakery is justified

Older children at play ...

We all have them but our feelings about their use and abuse are mixed. I am guilty of using mine excessively; so are many others. In France, Emmanuel Macron's government has decided enough is enough and will ban pupils from using mobile phones at school from the start of the next academic year. From my column for The National* ...

A quick look around fellow passengers on the Dubai or Paris metros, or the London Tube, reveals a uniform pattern. Nearly everyone is on a mobile phone.

Much less often these days do we hear a traveller blurt out: “I’m on the train” to someone at the other end of the train line and phone line. It was once a jarring accompaniment to any public transport journey. How much more discreet to text and how much simpler when the message amounts to an apology for being late home.

“How on earth did we manage before mobiles?" it is often asked.

Johnny Hallyday nous quitte. A musical Englishman mourns

For those who appreciate non-corporate, independent music - not just folk - I marked the death of Johnny Hallyday by reproducing in full an essay written 10 years ago (for that site) by Robb Johnson, a challenging left-wing British singer-songwriter. I thought it was an excellent appraisal of a man whose work had somewhat passed me by. Me? I salute the voice, the style and the huge esteem in which Hallyday is held in the francophone world. Read this: http://www.salutlive.com/2017/12/johnny-hallyday-est-mort-the-essential-essay-on-a-french-rock-legend.html I have never been a fan; he was as corporate as any other. Yet Robb's words, which shall be published here as well as at Salut! Live, will encourage me to delve more deeply into the Hallyday legacy. France knows his place. See the welter of coverage at FranceInfo. Even if you do not read French, you'll get the idea. There will be a day of "popular hommage", a parade on the Champs-Elysées, a burial in the French Caribbean.

The cynical British view - "famous rock star not many have even heard of"- has a germ of truth but is reduced to rubble by what follows ....

Ten seconds of London terror but keeping a sense of proportion

Eight days on, I still find it hard to articulate my part in the Oxford Circus terror attack that wasn't. I had just walked from Oxford Street to Piccadilly Circus and was on the first floor of Picture House Central having bought tickets for Call Me By Your Name (beautifully shot but no, I didn't enjoy it). Read on to see what happened next (from a Comment piece for The National*). It's all to do with the psychology of terror, the way we react in potentially traumatic circumstances ...