Salut!

Covid-19 Diaries. Toronto: (4) virtual dining etiquette

You cannot silence a good writer. Bill Taylor is maintaining his stream of entertaining dispatches from Toronto, the Canadian one as opposed to the village outside his boyhood habitat of Bishop Auckland.

They can all be seen at this link though beware: his first was actually a compilation of several and is therefore what we might term a long read. I may get around to dividing it into two or three ...

Even fresher notes from the trenches:

It was bound to happen. Finally a disturbed night, my sleep swept away by a tidal wave of emotions concerning virtual dinner parties via Skype or Zoom or whatever.

I know people are having them but the etiquette escapes me.

Covid-19 Diaries. Madrid: (2) imagining last moments

No sooner had I more thoughts from Toronto to post here than Richard Pretorius came up with a brief, poignant update from Madrid. See the series of coronavirus diaries here ...

As I walked by an ambulance services depot with at least a dozen workers taking a needed break outside in Madrid, I thanked them all profusely in the Spanish I knew.

Covid-19 Diaries. Toronto: (3) even a sunny song made it snow

Friends pop up all over the world and all are more than welcome to send me their own coronavirus diaries/jottings. Bill Taylor led the way with his notes, reproduced here from his Facebook pages. See the series at this link . And meanwhile, if you were wondering how low humanity could sink ...

I was hoping that this would turn out to be a fake tweet, not the actual words of a former sort-of colleague and decent author. It really does scrape the bits of the barrel Trump left unscraped.

— Colin Randall (@salutsunderland) March 24, 2020

Covid-19 Diaries. Toronto: (2) would my kazoo brighten the neighbours' day?

Here are some further thoughts from Bill Taylor in Toronto as the coronavirus pandemic makes everyday life ever more difficult. The series has broadened to include, so far, notes from Madrid, and can be seen in full at this link ...

 

 

Ongoing notes from the trenches:

         Has it only been a week?

         Damn.

Covid-19 Diaries. Madrid: (1) balcony shows to lift the booze-free mood

Richard Pretorius is another of those friends dotted around the world as the global Covid-19 crisis deepens. I have not known him as long as I have Bill Taylor, whose jottings from Toronto appeared here yesterday.

We met while working at The National in Abu Dhabi and have kept contact since, enjoying lunch in London when that sort of thing was still possible and even, briefly, becoming colleagues again (Arab Weekly). He's in Madrid, from where he has been posting his observations ...

As to be expected, the Madrid lockdown has been extended another 15 days past March 25. It will likely get much worse here on the horrific death toll over the next two weeks. Silver linings, I don't drink alcohol alone at home.

So after this is done two Belgian beers will knock me out, I will have a little extra money in the bank and the nightly balcony shows will be etched in my mind as one of the great unexpected experiences. Vive Madrid! Vive La Vida Loca!

Covid-19 Diaries. Toronto: (1) locking down and still the holiday ads arrive

A great friend and occasional contributor to Salut!, Bill Taylor lives with another great friend, his wife Lesley, in Toronto. Bill, a Sunderland-supporting lad from Bishop Auckland, Co Durham, is naturalised as a Canadian. For the past few days he has been impressing his large Facebook following with tales of his own ways of dealing with the coronavirus pandemic out there in Toronto. This is his diary to date: it stretches from March 16 to March 22 and there may well be more to come. My choice of Bill's photos has nothing to do with sequence and I may add other shots ...

Coronavirus: France's desperate battle to prevent an Italian 'tsunami' of infection

The beautiful Promenade des Anglais in normal times. Image: W M Connolley - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=11733

I raise my hat to colleagues at The National, Abu Dhabi, including Jack Moore and Taylor Heyman, who are having to work remotely when editing and posting content such as my update, also remotely from France of the steps being taken by French authorities to fight the spread of coronavirus and in particular to spare their country the horrendous fate of Italy. I have the editor's consent to reproduce my work at Salut! ....

France’s hardening approach to combating the coronavirus outbreak, with steep fines for defiance of strict limits on movement, reflects both concern at its rising death count and fears that the country cannot rule out suffering as severely as Italy.

In Nice, one of France’s front lines just 30 kilometres from the Mediterranean border crossing near Ventimiglia, health professionals say the risk of degeneration to Italian levels of infection – 53,578 cases and nearly 5,000 deaths, including a record day-on-day rise of almost 800 fatalities, on Saturday’s figures - is possible.

“Some talk of a tsunami,” says Dr Patrice Melia, a cardiologist, pointing out that the effects of the virus in France remain some way from their likely peak. France’s tally for infection stood on Saturday at 14,485 including 562 deaths.

Syd Young RIP: 'Daily Mirror legend', confrere and friend

Photo courtesy of Andrew Young

 

If I say a friend who has just died was a great reporter and an even greater human being, readers of Salut! who knew Syd Young will instantly recognise the description.

It would mean less to others, less again if I added that his great reporting was done for a tabloid newspaper.

Please put aside any such prejudice. Take it from me that Syd, who died last Friday (March 6 2020), was an outstanding journalist who happened to spend his career at the Daily Mirror but would have shone just as brightly in any other part of the media he had chosen to work.

More than that, he was a man of enormous charm, kindness and wit.

Jack Lang's mission to promote Arabic, a hidden 'treasure of France'

Image: Marie-Lan Nguyen*

Arabic is an ancient language with a rich history that deserves better than kneejerk association with Islamism. The veteran French politician Jack Lang is campaigning to improve its status in the education system. For The National, I spoke to him and to a French woman who is learning the language to make it easier to work with people in Palestinian refugee camps ...

One of France’s most respected political figures has launched a campaign to make Arabic lessons widely available in French schools as part of a struggle to protect the language from “ideological, demagogic and populist manipulation”.

Jack Lang, 80, a former education and culture minister and president of the Institute of the Arab World in Paris, describes the language as a “treasure of France”, but one afflicted by a lack of public awareness of its place in national and international history.