Salut!

Hollywood corn, magic corn & Abu Dhabi's chattering classes

In the first Salut! Forum contribution for some while, and the first from Abu Dhabi at all, Craig Courtice* tries to be even-handed about the pests whose mobile phone calls and garrulous habits add an irritating dimension to going to the movies

Forget the mosques and the palaces and the souks. The first thing I wanted to do when I arrived in Abu Dhabi was check out the movies.

Sure, watching films is my job, but going to the cinema is my favourite way to explore a new culture. In Germany, while checking out Die Farbe des Geldes (The Colour of Money) I discovered not only does Tom Cruise sound a lot more masculine in Deutsche, but the patrons prefer sugar on their popcorn rather than salt.

Since Miami has such a large Hispanic population, their theatres show more Spanish-language films (I saw the magical Intacto there). And the good folks of Sydney take advantage of their temperate climate with plenty of outdoor screenings (although it rained when I saw Rear Window near the harbour).

So what have I learned of movie culture here in the capital of the Emirates?

Well, for one the locals seem to have no problem chatting while the movie is playing. Or talking on their cellphones. The films I've watched are English with Arabic subtitles, so perhaps this is their way of understanding the story.

Or, more likely, the idea of going out to the cinema is relatively new so the etiquette isn't ingrained. The chatting is mostly annoying, but it can be charming. In a scene from Dan in Real Life, the dishdash-clad lads behind me recounted the jokes to each other in Arabic. There was a punchline punctuated by the translated punchline, doubling the humour, especially since the scene was a song about pigs.

Flying high: those costly extras of low cost travel

Louise Manfield is a frequent flyer on Salut!, having added her pearls of wit and wisdom to my postings ever since the site was launched nearly a year ago. We had first "met" - electronically -when Louise contributed comments to my blog at Another Place and she may still, for all I know, loiter in that corner of the internet, which I prefer to avoid. She is also a frequent flyer in the ordinary sense, and devotes her Salut! Forum slot to some trenchant thoughts on the small-print turbulence of low cost aviation

I fly a lot, and the price of the ticket comes out of my pocket, so I have become a one-woman travel agency, aided by my sleek Mac, hunting out bargains using low-cost airlines.

Through choice I would travel business class around Europe and First Class to far away places, but unfortunately I don't have that choice!

Low cost should not be confused with Last Minute. If on the spur of the moment you think a weekend away in some romantic location would be a lovely idea, then forget cheap tickets, they don't exist. If, however, you are organised and book your tickets a month or so in advance, low cost flying does come into its own.

I fly frequently between Geneva and Brussels - book a month ahead and you can grab a ticket for €10 one way - and that same ticket on the same plane booked a couple of days before departure will cost anything up to €300! And don't even entertain the thought of flying on a Friday or a Sunday night!

These prices are, of course, just the basic seat price - a return ticket from Geneva to Brussels may cost around €30 but one then has to add on various taxes amounting to €70 or so. This is fine - we know that we have to pay these hidden extras. My gripe is the "Hidden, Hidden" extras and this is where the airline companies make serious money.

No queueing please, we're French

Intimidated by the anarchy of the boulangerie? Perplexed by the art of French kissing (calm down - on one another's cheeks, I mean)? Gigi, also known as Gill Baconnier*, took advice from Gérard Depardieu before slipping into Salut! Forum mode to navigate the minefield of French manners......

“Manners maketh man” somebody once said, before political correctness became de rigueur and spoilt the alliteration.

They had a point though, especially when it comes to table manners – you can tell a lot about a person by the way they wield a fork.

This noble implement was brought to France from Florence in 1533 by Catherine de Medici, when she married the future French King Henri II.

Until then, people had eaten with their fingers or with pointed knives - later banned by Louis XIV because they encouraged violence (presumably, in those days, you just stabbed the serving wench to death if the soup was cold). Eventually, forks caught on in England and table manners were born.

Au revoir, mais pas adieu (2)

In search of a new base, temporarily, after five years in Antibes, Colin Berry has found one original choice, Pisa, deeply disappointing. He was still unsure about the Spanish alternative until he paused close to the Italian-French border

Our final stop before reaching the French border, at a town we thought we knew well (San Remo) was a horror on a Saturday evening. I saw things there that confirmed me in my belief that Italy, even its supposedly most prosperous parts, is not at heart a First World country, at least not south, west, or east of Genoa.

The concepts of civic sense and duty, an ordered society, that I have been brought up with are in reality a thin veneer. Italians as individuals are wonderful, warm and friendly. But their public life operates on the law of the jungle, each man for himself, and such a far cry from the past.

No, I don‘t engage in that brand of saloon bar talk that refers disparagingly to a period in history when Romans became Italians. I think of those magnificent street plans of medieval Italian cities, towns and villages, with their dedication to civilized public life, shown in their piazzas, art, villas, monuments. Sorry, but the pizza is no substitute for the piazza. I loved the interior of Tuscany, even if I never saw quite the configuration of bare hills, punctuated by cypresses, vineyards that one sees in those coffee-table books. So it’s back to Plan A: Girona.

Au revoir, mais pas adieu (1)

When a man tires of Antibes, he is not necessarily tired of life. Colin Berry, Salut! Forum's latest contributor, explains his decision to leave, though not for ever, his home on the French Riviera in search of fresh pastures. He also weighs up the choice between Pisa and Girona

Jane and I have been living in Antibes for close on five years. While we love the place, and are happy to see it as a long-term base, we both felt the need for a change and a challenge, before our recently acquired status among the senescenti became too apparent.

The current fashion for long-haul holidays appeals to neither of us. We have both lived and worked on other continents, dislike long flights, and are both aware of the sheer richness and diversity of culture that exists within Europe within relatively short distances. Despite the best efforts of Brussels, language is a barrier that prevents us becoming a culturally-bland EU-standardised homogenised purée.

While US citizens may consider it a cultural shock to cross the border into Mexico, it is nothing as compared with that on crossing the few miles of the Straits of Gibraltar from Spain to Morocco – said to be the most abrupt economic and social contrast on the planet between two adjacent nations.

I need hardly say there are gentler but nonetheless challenging differences within Europe, say between France and Italy, or France and Spain, reflected in climate, scenery, architecture, cuisine … Thinking back, it started by our resurrecting an idea for owning a camper van and having, intermittently, a roving existence, as and when the fancy takes us .

But we kept running up against the same problem. Where are we going to park the thing in Antibes ? Large garages are rarely up for rent, or sale for that matter, and a stroll round town shows a depressing number whose access is obstructed by parked cars. Who wants the hassle of getting their owners to move, especially if returning late at night ? That’s when we made a quantum leap in our thinking about lifestyle.

We did initially think of the nuclear option of selling up in Antibes, and relocating somewhere different but resented the hefty estate agents’ fees that would be incurred. Being far higher on the Continent generally than the UK they are a consideration, as is capital gains tax.

So why not rent a villa for a year, probably in Spain or Italy, with space to park a camper van, and maybe even a patio or garden or swimming pool?

Johnny Hallyday: the last chapter

For anyone who began following Robb Johnson's tribute to Johnny Hallyday here, the third and final part now appears at Salut! Live. He has some provocative thoughts on French and Anglo-American pop cultures, and I have naturally added another YouTube clip of his héros in action.

My thanks are due to him for a work of real depth. Robb is such a prolific writer on his own account that he's probably put himself 1,000 new songs behind schedule. Oh, and that's Robb not Johnny above, of course.

And I'll be back over the weekend with some thoughts on the French and Anglo drinking cultures.......

Dead good

In the latest contribution to Salut! Forum, my series of guest columns, Bill Taylor, familiar to most visitors to this site and its comments field for, well, being Bill Taylor, takes us back to his native North East of England to explore the complexity of emotions inspired by the death of his father

No, thanks, I didn't want to see my father's body. The man I knew was no longer in there. Better to look at the old pictures, like the one taken in 1938 when he and my mother, full of wide-eyed expectation for the future, got engaged. Though even then, she says, he had his cynical sense of humour and left-field view of the human condition.

I grew up with him constantly reminding me to "believe nothing that you hear and only half of what you see". Not a bad grounding for a journalist, though my choice of profession made him look at me, too, with a jaundiced eye.

"Good morning," I said to him on my first day in newspapers.

"No comment," he replied.

He died at home in North East England. I wore a pink tie to his funeral, which caused minor outrage among some of the mourners but was what he'd always said he wanted. My sister's husband, who couldn't quite bring himself not to, wore a black one.

Hallyday had his day? Non monsieur, Johnny be good (2)

Johnny in public service mode. Picture: ParisDailyPhoto

The second part of Robb Johnson's epic work on his implausible héros Johnny Hallyday can now be found at Salut! Live, along with another clip of Johnny in action.

Come back here later today for a wonderful tale of granny rage, French style.

Hallyday had his day? Non monsieur, Johnny be good

French pop music is rubbish. Everyone knows that. Or is it? Robb Johnson*, an English singer-songwriter with impeccably radical views, uses Salut! Forum to discuss his improbable passion for Johnny Hallyday

Halfway through the last century, it became manifest to most of the youth of the industrialised western world that being a grown-up was not a particularly desirable option.

Teenagers, like women a sociological phenomenon recently empowered out of historical and economic necessity, literally faced conscription into an adult world organised upon naked principles of institutionalised violence, legalised murder and mass destruction.

If you want a three minute thumbnail sketch of what life was like in the 20th century for the industrialised masses, listen no further than Jacques Brel’s bleak howl of anguish and impotence Au Suivant.

Not surprisingly teenagers were less than enamoured of such career opportunities.

During the Second World War, Europe under fascism (which after all is only capitalism taken to brutally domestic extremes) saw the emergence of youth sub-cultures of not so much resistance as disaffection.

However, it took the US and the mid-50s before international youth finally found a language that expressed their adolescent rebellion against the awfulness of the adult world.

In the US, with black culture, there was a ready made template already at odds with the ruling hegemony. So America got rock’n’roll and Elvis Presley, Britain got rock’n’roll and Cliff Richard, and France got Yé-yé and Johnny Hallyday.

And that says it all really. Anybody care to own up to having Cliff’s latest album? Fifty years later, and the only one of that classic triumvirate still rocking, with a capital R, is Hallyday.

He is all your rock’n’roll dreams come true.

Stirring it

Philip Howells, I thought, gave a good send-off to the new Salut! Forum feature of my site. It was combative and open to dispute, but that is how it should be. I am grateful to him and also to all those who have taken the trouble to reply.

It goes without saying that I do not expect to agree with all or even any part of each guest writer's posting. Equally, I think I make my own views clear enough here, on the Guardian Comment is Free pages and even - if you are tempted to stray that way - my other sites. There seems no need for me automatically to wade in with ripostes of my own.

As I have just remarked to a reader who contacted me by e-mail, Salut! Forum will not develop as an invitation-only platform. Please feel absolutely free to offer a contribution and I will do my best to find a way of including it.