Salut!

Memo to Lord Leveson: even good journalism invades privacy

Image: ShironekoEuro

It is not necessary to swallow every unchallenged bleating from the National Union of Luvvies to recognise that journalism has harboured something rotten at its core.

A gang of men with cameras chasing Sienna Miller down the street, maybe even spitting at her to provoke a photographable reaction; a reporter stuffing a note in the schoolbag of J K Rowling's child; others hacking the phones or computers of cruelly bereaved relatives, or rummaging through celebs' dustbins ... it all makes for uncomfortable reading if you happen to earn your living in the trade.

Bali and back: flights, flora and fauna

I knew I'd find a use for my photos of Balinese flora and fauna. I didn't think that use would be as illustration for a posting about air travel, but it does save me having to put names to pictures and is the perfect solution for any reader bored with airline comparisons ...

Which is your airline of choice?

It is fair to say I have never thought of answering my own question with Air and France in that order, my experience of its flights ranging from poor to moderate. And my last encounter with Virgin would have put my nose out of joint had my right knee not already performed the task as I fought a losing battle against the miserly leg room.

Tesco: a drama in two, maybe three parts

Saturday morning shopping and a mild outbreak of till rage. But there are two, possibly three versions of what went on. I can offer one and guess at the second but must remain silent on the third, if third there is.

We had two full baskets. The woman in front had a similar number of purchases already laid out on the belt and turned to raise her eyebrows in exasperation as she allowed an elderly woman to pass ahead of her with a solitary packet of butter.

Vive la difference: forty not out

On this day 40 years ago, Joëlle Marie Simone Poupard and Colin John Randall walked up the aisle of l'église Sainte-Jeanne d'Arc in Le Mans, made their vows and left for the sumptuous banquet awaiting some of the good folk of La Sarthe (and Shildon, County Durham).

And some of those good folk began plotting observation of that grand old French tradition of pursuing bride and groom to their hotel to make an unholy racket beneath their window before demanding onion soup and Calvados in the morning.

It follows that if Mlle Poupard, as was, and Mr Randall remain alive and married to each other, they are today celebrating their ruby wedding anniversary.

The Jury: this one should be hung, despite Julie Walters

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French TV can be awful. The best programmes are studio debates, but go on for ever and start when I'm often enough ready to sleep. But are things better in the UK?

So, I came back from France to find the place had become a street of crime. That's an exaggeration, but the police did seize cannabis-growing equipment, and drugs worth more than £300,000, from a house a few doors down. The last occupant had moved out and most of us thought it was empty.

Television drama loves crime. Each time you watch Coronation Street you get the impression that everyone in the street who is not, as well as being adulterous, a murderer, kidnapper or thief has at least been wrongly accused of being one.

Pierre, eBay and an 99p offer for my BMW

The Frenchness of this posting is quickly established by reminding Salut! readers that while the founder of eBay may have been an Iranian-American computer programmer by the name of Pierre Omidyar, the first name was no fluke since he was born in France.

That - the founding of eBay, not the birth of Pierre - was as long ago as 1995. It has taken me until now to join the eBay generation.