Salut!

Le Lavandou to Ealing: thank you for the music et au revoir

Why on earth would anyone give up this and willingly return to a gloomy, grey post-Brexit Britain in which, as my great friend Pete Sixsmith put it on the phone today, there is a distinctly nasty atmosphere? Not so much racism, he thought, but xenophobia, a loathing of all foreigners.

Somalia and the Euromillions: tears of pity, feelings of rage

Today Salut! is proud to offer space for a special guest slot. Step forward Joëlle Randall. Last night, I had been at badminton; she had been in tears of pity as she watched a programme about an African human tragedy. She narrowly avoided shedding tears of rage at another news item ...

Last night, I caught a programme on French television about Somalia.

A grandmother was shown travelling 60km across barren land to a hospital in a desperate attempt to save her two grandchildren, aged three and one.

The words of Amos

Mike Amos is a much-honoured English regional journalist. He's the sole reason I gained a start in journalism, whether journalism thinks that was a good or bad thing, and I still think of him decades later as my boss. Bill Taylor salutes Mike's 45 years of service ...

I remember when my dad turned 80, he looked at me in some bewilderment and said: “I don’t feel any different inside. . . in my mind I haven’t grown old.”

He had, of course. As do we all, if we’re lucky. I’m 62 and Colin, if he’s not there already, is closing in on it (there - editor). I don’t know about him but I think of myself as being about 27.

Dust to ash: one man's volcano-defying journey home

For days, Jim Minton made slow but determined steps in his attempt to defeat Iceland's most famous export and get back to London from Lagos, where he often works. His regular bulletins entertained fellow subscribers to an e-mail group bringing together a disparate band of football supporters (of Sunderland AFC, not strictly relevant but essential to understanding certain references if, as Salut! believes, his account of the odyssey cried out to be repeated)...

Thursday:

Well, I am stuck in Lagos - probably one of the dustiest cities in the world - because of some nonsense in Iceland. I shall tell mum quite definitely NOT to go there in future. (Iceland, I mean, not Lagos). Any crack (about the football) for Saturday yet, anyone? I hope I am out of this sweltering airport by then, at least!

War: falling into enemy hands (2)

Jeremy Robson concludes his story of his dad's time as a prisoner of war during the final part of the Second World War, and reflects on his debt of life to an honourable enemy ...

During his convalescence in Scarborough, my father received a letter from the Air Ministry.

This informed him of an approach by Herr Heinrich Gottman, who was claiming that he and his family had helped an injured British airman in the closing stages of the war.

Herr Gottman had also told the ministry that a relative, Fritz Nolte, was a prisoner of war at a camp in Scotland. Naturally they were looking forward to his return to Germany, and hopingthe help they had offered to my father might be taken into consideration in securing Fritz with an earlier than scheduled release.

My father replied, pointing out that the Gottman family and other villagers had been very kind to him, especially given the circumstances.

They had done their very best to help treat his wounds and make him comfortable. They had very little to treat him with but had done the best they could. As the war was now over, he said that if anything could be done to reunite Fritz Nolte with his family, then it would be very much with his blessing. Over the following decades he never heard any more about this, and wondered if his reply to the Air Ministry had produced the desired effect.

War: falling into enemy hands (1)

Seventy years ago, we were at war. But it was still the phoney war, or what the French called the drôle de guerre. Months would pass before the fall of Paris, of France. And victory was years away. Jeremy Robson*, an occasional contributor to Salut! and Salut! Sunderland (he would qualify for the moribund Salut! North, too, though not Salut! Live), has been yearning to tell the story of how the war ended for his father. Here, in a week in which Salut! will devote some space to human aspects of the Second World War, is the first part of his story ...

In early March, 1945 the end of the World War Two was close. At the time no one was really aware of how close; people scarcely dared dream that the hostilities that had blighted Europe for five or six years would soon be at an end.

My father Leslie Robson (third from left in the grainy picture of his crew) was a navigator and bomb aimer on a Halifax bomber, in 197 Squadron, Special Duties, Undergroup attached to Bomber Command.

The air force had tried to train him as a pilot and he was able to fly the plane as well as the rest of them, but he just couldn’t get the hang of landing it. So that was how he came to be a navigator.

War, flying machines and French connections (2)

Philip Howells, in a guest contribution, offers some further thoughts on wartime aviation mishaps following the Salut! piece juxtaposing reflections on two such incidents in France .....

The item at Salut! arrived at a most apposite moment for a number of reasons,
all of which bear on the search by Jeremy Robson for information on his
Lancaster crew. Since this is likely to be rather long I send it direct and
leave it to you to decide what, if any, of it to place on Salut.

One thing that making the video programme you referred to (since shown on Arte
and available, in French only at present, at the Espace York Mallory - the
museum that the good people of le Rivier have opened in honour of Leigh-Mallory)
is that time is passing very quickly and we are losing the source material.

'My mum'

On what I remember as a sunny day in late summer, I saw my brother Phil's wife Chrissie for the last time. Phil at the time was grossly underweight, having suffered a strange ailment that had been difficult to diagnose. I was worried about his health. Chrissie, on the other hand, was her normal robust, cheerful and in-command self.
The way she described the historical landmarks of Rochester, Kent to her young sons, Steven (that's him closest to her in the photograph) and Matthew, illustrated perfectly why she had chosen a career in teaching. She combined strong general knowledge with impressive powers of communication. Within months, it was not Phil but Chrissie that was seriously ill. She fought her cancer bravely, but ultimately in vain. In our last telephone conversation, at Christmas time, she spoke of a break from chemotherapy as the "best present I could have". A few months later, she died. Steven, now 16 and doing his GCSEs, wrote this essay* as part of his English studies. So far as I know, everyone who has read it so far has struggled to avoid tears. I struggled, and failed. And I am very proud to reproduce, with Steven's consent, his beautiful tribute at Salut!, exactly as written....
......

Pain and pleasure

French baguettes. Wherever honest men and women find themselves munching bread, if they are not in France, they think wistfully of the real thing. The bakers of other countries produce perfectly tasty examples of other kinds of bread; the baguette seems to resist all attempts to beat the French at their own game. Or does it? In another of Salut!'s guest columns, James Langton - a baker who dabbles in journalism* - is inspired by the recent bread Oscars to explain the growing upstart threat to French supremacy

There cannot be many international tournaments where victory and defeat taste equally sweet.

For those of you who may have missed it last weekend, it was the finals of the world cup. la Coupe du Monde de la Boulangerie in fact. Held every three years, the venue is always the same. Paris, France.

The France bit is necessary because for the past decade, the title has escaped the hosts. Despite what you might think, the French are not masters of the baguette in their own back yard.

In fact the winners of two titles, including the previous contest in 2005, have been the United States of America. One of the winning categories was the Golden Gate Bridge made from bread. The other title , as I recall, went to the Japanese.

Ain't got them sexagenarian blues

Bill Taylor was memorably critical of Salut!'s decision to publish occasional guest columns. So what better way could there be of expressing his disapproval than to write his second such contribution, this time on the importance of feeling upbeat about being 60? Accepted with glee, not least because it - and Bill's apparent struggle, even at 50, to climb a few steps on the Great Wall of China - make Salut! feel young

Turning 60 last month proved to be a non-event. The day dawned and there it was - or there I was. The same as I had been the day before. It finally struck me that with everyone around me taking my age in their stride, I could hardly continue making a fuss over it myself.

The final couple of weeks of being 59 had been rather fraught. The proximity of that seventh decade was daunting. In spite of all the clichés about 60 being the new 40, as far as I was concerned, 60 was 60 and it seemed, for want of a better word, getting on for ancient. A time to start thinking of retirement and pensions. Both of which are such old words. I felt as if the passage from one decade to another couldn't help but make me feel different. But it didn't.

I'd never before had a problem with ages ending in a zero - 50 passed as painlessly as 40. Thirty, I hardly remember. I had a bit of a problem when I hit 39. That was my first mid-life crisis. Or possibly my only one - they've flowed together so seamlessly since as to be hard to distinguish one from another. I quickly learned to treat them rather like a half-tamed horse. The key was not to be thrown but to stay in the saddle and enjoy the ride. And for the most part I have.