Olivia is at home ill and watching Grey’s Anatomy. There is a girl in the episode she’s watching who suffers from spontaneous orgasms (sounds better than flu). Olivia has just asked me what’s wrong with her.

“She keeps having sort of, well, fits,” I tell her.

“What’s a fit?”

Get a grip, I think to myself. Surely you can tell her what’s really going on. “Well, actually she keeps having an orgasm.”

“What’s an orgasm?”

“Something women have when they’re very happy.”

“Can you explain it to me when the esipode (sic) is over?”

So I now have twenty minutes to try to work out how to explain the female orgasm to my daughter. This reminds me of a conversation we had in Corsica while staying with my friend Rachel. Her daughter Mary and Olivia were chatting about where babies come from.

“Well,” said my goddaughter Mary who is six months older than Olivia. “The man puts his parts near the woman’s parts.”

“Ugh, I’m not doing that,” said Olivia. “Have you done that mummy?”

“She’s got three children so she’s done it three times,” Mary answered for me.

“And your mummy’s got four, so she’s done it four times,” said Olivia. “I’m not going to do it any times.”

“Me neither,” said Mary.

I can hear the credits rolling. Maybe I can distract Olivia with a game of Connect 4. But knowing her, she’ll come back to her question. I’d better think of a better answer than a joke I once heard from a South African (male) friend of mine.

“What’s a female orgasm?”

“Who cares?”

Copyright: Helena Frith Powell 2007

Two days ago Olivia said to me; “Mummy, you’re never ill.” Well, now I am. I feel like death. My head hurts, my throat hurts, in fact my whole body hurts. I am constantly coughing and sneezing. My husband has had the same thing and now two of the three children have it as well. So my trip to Blightly has been postponed.

The illness has its upsides. One, I am not hungry so if I ever get to start my publicity tour I will be as thin as any self-respecting Frenchwoman. Two it meant I got to stay at home today instead of carting off to London. This had two main advantages. I could spend some more time blowing my nose and coughing with my children but also I could watch the Australian Open Men’s final while my husband bought me cups of hot honey and lemon (despite the fact that he has been ill all week and I have been fairly unsympathetic to say the least, there’s nothing quite as boring as an ill man).

Of course I would have preferred a final with Marat Safin in it (maybe a picture here would be appropriate to remind those of you who don’t know who he is) but watching Federer reminds me of Mozart.

In an effort to wean the children (and me) off Desperate Housewives and Grey’s Anatomy Rupert suggested we all watch Amadeus. The kids were gripped by “Wolfie” as they call him and his story.

I was struck by how far ahead of his contemporaries - or indeed anyone else - Mozart was, just as Federer is proving to be. Genius, in all its forms, is compulsive viewing, even when you’re dying of flu.

Copyright: Helena Frith Powell 2007

A survey out today by a US magazine called International Living places Britain at number 37 in the world of best countries to live. We share this dubious honour with Greece, Ecuador, Cyprus, Iceland and Lithuania. Apart from Greece I have never been to any of those places. Partly because on a scale of must-visit countries they’re way down there. Actually I think in my dim and distant past as a financial journalist I did once go to Lithuania to write about its central bank; but it could have been Latvia or Estonia.

It is depressing news that Britain scored so badly. Especially if you live there. Obviously I don’t. I live in France, which was voted, guess what? Number one of course.

But the fact that Britain is on a par with Cyprus and ranks way below a whole host of unlikely places like Finland (have you any idea how COLD and miserable it can get there?) and Bulgaria surprises me. I have been to Bulgaria and won’t be heartbroken if I never go there again. And maybe things have gone horribly downhill in the six years since we left, but I would always rate London over Ljubljana as a place to winter.

If Britain is such a dreadful place, why do countless foreigners want to live there? Did you know, for example, that there are more than 300,000 French people living in London? Just take a walk around South Kensington if you don’t believe me.

Tomorrow morning I head off to Blighty so I will be able to keep you posted on whether or not it really is one of the worst places in the world. I am looking forward to my trip, I always enjoy myself there whatever the surveys say.

Copyright: Helena Frith Powell 2007

I have just been to collect the children at school and see that something called a Mammobile is parked in the main square. This is, I assume, a travelling mammogram that will test women for breast cancer. Personally I would rather be run over by it than go inside.

I had my first mammogram a few weeks ago. I can safely say it was the most painful, unpleasant experience I have ever been subjected to and yes, I do include childbirth in that. I knew I was in for a shocker when my mother-in-law told me she’d had one and “it wasn’t very nice”. My mother-in-law is one of those women who make you wonder how we ever lost the empire; stoical, determined and not one to grumble unless her leg is being chewed off.

So I was already nervous when I showed up at the sparkling X-ray clinic. But what was in store was worse than I could ever have imagined. My breasts were literally squeezed to within an inch of their lives between metal plates. “Don’t look,” said the nurse administering this torture. Don’t look? I couldn’t see them. They no longer existed. The last time I was called flat as a pancake I was thirteen. Here I was even flatter, in fact I dream about making pancakes that are as wafer-thin as my breasts were. The pain was excruciating and this process was repeated FOUR times on EACH breast. At one stage I thought about just running away. But it would have meant leaving one of my breasts clamped in the machine.

I have to say I don’t think my breasts have been the same since this horrible event. They seem to have lost some of their joie de vivre. I much prefer my own theory (see Alone at Last blog) for breast cancer prevention.

One thought I had as I was being squashed and flattened was that if the test for testicular cancer involved a similar process, I bet someone would have invented a new machine by now….So I will continue to support breast cancer charities in the hope that some kind person will, but I swear I will never ever subject my breasts to the barbarity of a mammogram again. At least not while I’m conscious.

Copyright: Helena Frith Powell 2007

I am reading Suite Francaise at the moment, as good a book as I have ever read. It is about France during the second-world war, written by Irene Nemirovsky, a Russian-Jew who lived in France and was carted off to Auschwitz in front of her two daughters on July 13th 1942. “I am going on a journey now,” she told them. Of course they never saw her again. She died a month later aged 39.

Her story made me weep. I suppose as a writer with two daughters it was easy for me to relate to her. But it also made me think about how easy we have it now and how much we take for granted.

Yesterday I took Olivia to the dentist. In the waiting room we sat next to an elderly lady called Francoise. She told me about Pezenas during the war, when the Germans were here. She told me how she worked as a maid in a house with a large terrace. On that terrace there were vast pots filled with earth. Every day she pushed the pots a little closer to the edge, ready for the final push when she would tip them onto the German soldiers marching below, singing nationalistic songs.

She regrets to this day that her plan was foiled by the lady of the house who was too scared to let her go on with it. “I was almost there,” she told me. “But they were so heavy I could only do a bit each time.”

Francoise, now aged 86, lost her husband and brother in the war. Her husband died in a POW camp never knowing he had a little daughter called Leanne. She still hates the Germans.

In her dedication at the front of Suite Francaise Irene’s daughter (who found the book among her mother’s belongings) dedicates it to “everyone who has felt and continues to feel the tragedy of intolerence”. My generation has no reason to hate for as long or with such venom as Francoise’s does. I hope it stays that way.

Copyright: Helena Frith Powell 2007

Carrying on the lust theme, I heard an interesting definition of sex as we drove home from our weekend in Uzes on Sunday. Bea (pictured left) was busy telling Olivia that she had had sex with her best friend Manon. As you can imagine, I stopped map-reading pretty rapidly to listen.

“Oh yes,” she said casually. “Manon and I have had sex.”

“No you haven’t,” said her older and wiser sister. “Sex is to get all naked and to kiss on the lips for like an hour.”

Sounds exhausting…..

The conversation then turned to what we had most liked about Uzes. Olivia liked the “magic scarf” we bought her, Leo liked the truffle-hunting pig, I liked the lunch we had on Saturday in the main square, Rupert liked the wine we had with lunch on Saturday in the main square. And Bea?

“Can I say you what I liked?” she asked (they still haven’t got the difference between say and tell). “I didn’t like anything.” Then she spent the rest of the journey asleep, only waking up when we turned up our drive to sing a song about the joys of being home.

Maybe next time we’ll leave her with Manon, or on second thoughts, maybe not!

Copyright: Helena Frith Powell 2007

It is Sunday morning and we are in Uzès for the 14th annual truffle fest. This is a magical place, a medieval town in the hills about half an hour from Avignon. As usually happens when we travel anywhere in the direction of Provence I have decided I want to move here immediately. We arrived yesterday to bright sunshine and a bustling Saturday market. We had a lovely lunch at a restaurant called Terroir, while the market took place all around us. The restaurant is run by Tom who is an even weirder mixture than me; half Belgian and half Swedish but speaks perfect English.

Today the truffle fest will involve watching dogs and pigs hunt truffles in the main square, a truffle-cooking competition and a lecture on how to eat them by the resident truffle expert.

Last night however it involved a dinner. This started at eight o’clock and by half past eleven we still had two courses to go. As you can imagine all the courses involved truffles.

Am I the only person in the world who finds big dinners extremely tedious? I invariably get a type of claustrophobia brought on by the feeling of being trapped there for at least another three hours. On my left was a Swiss man who went into great details about the pros and cons of various Swiss ski resorts I have never heard of (really wasted on me as I only ski under duress). To my right was my best French friend Alex, so that was good. The seating plan was curious. There were three women on the table and the host put us next to each other. The third woman was his wife who, despite being a wine-maker, doesn’t touch alcohol. If I found the evening dull, she must have been practically sleep-walking.

Truffles are supposed to inspire lust. According to the gastronome Brillat-Savarin, it is impossible to remain faithful after eating them. I mentioned this to Alex who looked around the room and said. “Not in this place.” I don’t know if it was the effect of the truffles or plain boredom but I tried to snog Rupert between courses who said: “Stop that you fool, I’m your husband.”

At 1am we stumbled upstairs to our rooms to find our children still awake. Maybe we should have dragged them down to the dinner; they wouldn’t have liked the truffles but at least the conversation would have been entertaining.

I hope it’s not truffles for breakfast.

Copyright: Helena Friith Powell 2007

Here is a question for all you Francophiles: Can you name the person voted France’s most popular photographer in two separate polls? Henri Cartier Bresson, perhaps? Jacques Henri Lartigue? Robert Capa? Wrong, wrong, wrong.

The answer is David Hamilton, an Englishman. Who he, you may well ask. Well, if you have ever eaten at Club 55 on Pampelonne Beach, for my money the finest beach bar in the world, you may have noticed a rather distinguished old gentleman in the corner in a linen suit and a panama hat. This is Hamilton, who moved to St Tropez when Bardot was at the height of her fame and stayed ever since. (He winters in Paris, but doesn’t everybody?)

Hamilton is famous for his rather fuzzy, soft-focus pictures of young girls in various states of undress. His posters and calendars have adorned a thousand bedroom walls. His favourite models are thin, pale girls, many of whom he finds in Scandinavia. He wouldn’t like me, despite being half-Swedish I’m too dark and too old.

In North America and even Britain, in fact probably just about everywhere apart from France, Hamilton has become something of a hate figure. His work, say his critics, reeks of paedophilia, modern times’ most hated crime, but two new editions of his photographs have just been published.

Personally I’m amazed the French love him so much, if he were a book he’d be a Mills & Boon. My favourite is Henri Cartier Bresson. I once met him, he was related to my uncle. It was in a restaurant in Rome and my aunt (just for a change) was trying to make me eat something I didn’t like. “Why is it adults are always forcing children to eat what they don’t want?” he asked. A truly great man, and his photos weren’t bad either.

Copyright: Helena Frith Powell 2007

This week’s big news, apart from Big Bother, is the fact that a high-flying City worker is expecting her eighth baby. “Supermum” cried the headlines as everyone marvelled at this woman’s capacity to breed and earn more money in a month than most of us do in four years.
I beg to differ. Anyone in her position has enough money to employ help; lots of it. I bet she hasn’t seen an ironing board since her early twenties. Does she even know that the Dyson has taken over the world? Also she has what sounds like a husband who was genetically modified in the womb by a radical feminist group. He is a Zen Buddhist monk who has given up any hope of a normal life to look after their children aged 18 months to 15 years. In their household it is the saintly Mr Morrissey who deals with nappies, gym kit, adolescent tantrums and emptying the dishwasher (I would imagine around four times a day, unless they have an industrial one).

For me the real supermums are the ones who do it all the time. As I changed my son’s sheets this morning I thought, thank goodness I don’t only have this to do. Children are lovely; but let’s be honest, looking after them on a daily basis is often drudgery. Imagine if you had nowhere to escape to, no civilised adult conversations on the horizon, no decisions to make that didn’t involve which brand of nappies to buy or what to cook for the little angles to throw all over the kitchen? I, for one, would go mad. There is nothing I love more than my children, but I don’t need to be with them at all times. I haven’t told my husband (though I think he does the same) sometimes when he takes them all off to school in the morning and I’m left alone with only the prospect of work ahead of me I jump for joy. I feel like a bit of a prat jumping around the kitchen on my own shouting ‘yippee’, but Max the cat seems to enjoy it.
I think most working mothers if they were honest would admit that at times getting to the office is an absolute joy. One working mother I know, now retired, said she used to look forward to Monday mornings. I wonder who in the Morrissey household shares that sentiment?

Copyright: Helena Frith Powell 2007

I am meant to be working but instead am watching Marat Safin in the Australian Open. I am praying he will win. I have long been a fan of Safin’s. This is not surprising as he is tall, well-built, good-looking and Russian (what’s not to like?), although he has had a rather savage new haircut. But there is something else about him.

The commentator just said, as Safin won a fantastic point; “Just look at the faces and you can see why Safin is good to have in your tournament”. Safin is famous not only for his tennis, but for his womanising, fondness for fast cars and fiery temper. He breaks rackets and argues with umpires. The Russian ambassador to London once said of him; “He chases women, he drives fast cars, he’s a very naughty boy. We love him.” Safin has always vowed that when he retires he’ll go back to Russia because “the best looking girls live there”.

In today’s sanitised and politically correct world, characters like Safin are to be cherished. He’s a great entertainer. A sort of Boris Johnson of the tennis circuit, only sexier. As I post this, rain has stopped play with Safin struggling to stay in the match. Here’s hoping for a return to form when he comes back. The Australian Open will be a much duller tournament without him. But at least I might get some work done.

Copyright: Helena Frith Powell 2007