Salut!

Monette, the ungovernable French cat, is no more. RIP

My favourite photo of Monette, still a kitten, nestling on the mess that constituted my desktop in Paris

 

She took her name from her birthplace, a restaurant used by visitors to Giverny, home of the French impressionist Claude Monet, west of Paris, and of the water lilies he famously and beautifully painted. Monet died there in 1926, aged 86. Monette - her name was simply feminised - died in the less elegant setting of a vet's surgery in Whitton, not far from Heathrow, at sometime between Thursday evening and Friday morning. She would have been 16 in July, not a bad age for a cat though every member of the family is devastated by her loss.

Monette became the fourth of our family cats soon after Mme Salut and I moved to Paris in 2004. We had no intention of acquiring another but, on that day, this kitten only days old was making herself known around our feet as we ate following our visit to the house and gardens. And she was adorable. Joelle asked if they had one from the litter for sale and the waitress, after consulting la patronne, said: "Take her if you want."

The story is better told in an abandoned book project dating from 10 years ago. I shall repeat that below. The book idea - in the form of a feline autobiography - never got beyond this opening chapter after friends who know about such things said it had been done before and wasn't worth the effort.

But I am glad now that I wrote it. There would have been a later chapter about why I described her as Monette the ungovernable French cat (it was at one of those times when the French were showing themselves to be pretty ungovernable). 

Monette lived in Giverny, Paris, the south of France, London and Abu Dhabi. She died, I hope, in whatever knowledge cats have that she'd led a good and longish life and was a cherished pet, lovingly cared for in her last few days by our younger daughter Nathalie and granddaughter Maya. RIP.

Covid-19 Diaries. Toronto: (32) pure poetry

 

We haven't heard (here) from Bill Taylor for a little while but his daily slices of Toronto life continue to please his Facebook friends long after he announced that the time had come to end them. His followers saw things differently. 'Pure poetry' is how another friend described a previous instalment of Bill's diaries. This is just as good and is accompanied, as usual, by a photograph from his own repertoire ...

 

Covid-19 Diaries. Christelle, film and no Cannes do

 

Yet another casualty of the pandemic: the Cannes Film Festival which my wife, Joelle, attended for many years and to which she introduced our elder daughter, Christelle

Here, Christelle offers brief thoughts and some photographic memories ...

When the obituary writer needs an obituarist. RIP David Twiston Davies, Telegraph character par excellence

Journalists who believe in heaven and hell, as David Twiston Davies undoubtedly did, probably live their lives with a degree of uncertainty about where they will end up when the time comes. Ours is not a uniformly saintly trade.

But if we can at least assume there’ll be pass-outs from the Pearly and Hades Gates for residents to meet up in the Great Newsroom in the Sky, the composition of The Daily Telegraph editorial team for the afterlife has taken another step towards completion.

Twisters, as he was known to anyone who didn't call him the Twister, died from cancer on Sunday, aged 75.

He was a wonderfully irreverent character, amply equipped to serve either as letters editor or chief obituaries writer for this fanciful reincarnation of what was until recent years a great newspaper. Since he fulfilled both roles with distinction in his 40 years on the paper, he may combine them when reacquainted with the many fine reporters, specialists, sub-editors, photographers and executives who were his colleagues and mine but have also passed away. 

Daughters: football and work, film and furlough

 

 

One daughter works in film (she’s stopped my pocket money for saying cinema), the other for a company that supplies linen to restaurant. Demand for their skills, it is fair to say, has dropped a little

A good friend got it right a few years ago when he said one of them was a better footballer than I have ever been and, unlike me, supported a team worth supporting (Liverpool, not Sunderland). The other, he said with similar accuracy, had a far more glamorous job in media.

Nathalie still plays football, or did when football existed just as she worked (and won two promotions in quick succession) when work existed. 

 

Covid-19 Diaries. Toronto: (31 going on 50) in a changed world

 

We all find ways of getting through lockdown. Go to Salut! Live, my folk and folk-rock music site, and see what I've been up to.

Bill Taylor contributes there as he does here. A few weeks ago, he also started posting daily Facebook updates, each accompanied by a photograph from his vast repertoire, on life in Toronto during the coronavirus crisis. He probably expected to run out of ideas after a week or so.

His readers lapped up everything he posted and have refused to allow him to let go. Today's piece is his 50th. Salut! started late but has reproduced just over half of them. Bill felt, as I did, that as a series here, Covid-19 Diaries had run its course. But I still publish any items my friends care to offer and dip into Bill's Facebook pages from time to time. He doesn't agree but I am sure there's a slim volume in these jottings of his, though it would require him or a publisher to move fairly quickly ....