Practical dressing

Posted on February 11, 2007 by Helena

Roquebrun We’ve had a lovely weekend. Yesterday wandering around IKEA (a rather strange Swedish habit) and Montpellier. Montpellier is a fantastic city; it always seems to be sunny and there is lots to do. The only glitch was trying to visit the newly re-vamped Musee Fabre. The region has spent four years and around £50 million doing it up, but sadly didn’t get the computers working so the queue was longer than the one we endured to get through Miami airport in December. What’s wrong with a system where you pay your money, they give you a ticket and you move on? It works for the Louvre. Needless to say we gave up waiting and left. Olivia started weeping. Amazing – I have seen children weep at the thought of going into a museum, but never not going into one.

Today we visited the idyllic village of Roquebrun about half an hour from home where they hold an annual Mimosa fete. This involves lots of people wearing Mimosa and buying things from homely-looking stalls. On the way home we stop for a walk and come across some cows and horses roaming around a vineyard which the children immediately want to bring home.

My husband and I agree that on a scale of lovely weekends this one is right up there. The children were sweet, the sun was shining and IKEA even had Dill-flavoured crisps. There is only one problem: my feet. I don’t know why I insist on wearing high-heeled boots at all times. They are certainly not the most practical things to wear while stomping over fields, especially as at one stage I had to leap over a ditch to avoid a cow who was, as Bea put “looking quite grumpy.”

“It’s only an old cow,” laughed my husband. Like he would never try to avoid something looking grumpy with two great big horns pointing in his general direction?

I have just received an email from my old friend Kilks. She tells me she wears pyjamas at all times. “I think they are very clever the way they can be worn at night, through into the morning and school run, through cups of tea and very important site meetings with builders, through lunch and then afternoon pick up – no point changing for tea as will just get childrens food all over clothes – then may as well keep them on for bath time and story time through into my supper time – then before you know it it is bed time again – practical dressing I call it.”

I might have to try it, slippers have got to be better than five-inch suede boots when it comes to escaping random farm animals.

Where is my PR?

Posted on February 9, 2007 by Helena

PR PR Darling I am just finishing off my truffle omelette (like you do) when I get a call from a charming young journalism student. As part of her final year project she is publishing a Swedish newspaper. She has read my articles in the Mail, knows I am half-Swedish and wonders if I could write a 500-word editorial.

“I’d be delighted,” I say. Anything to promote Swedish culture. What there is of it.

“And do you think we could run a picture by-line?” she asks.

There is NOTHING a hackette likes more than a picture by-line, the bigger the better.

“Of course,” I say.

“Could I talk to your PR about getting a picture?” is her next question.

I have always known there is something missing from my life. For a while I wondered whether it was my lack of religious conviction, or maybe the fact that I am sub-consciously yearning for another child or that my La Prairie eye cream has just run out. Now at long last, the mystery is solved. I need a PR. Of course. How did I ever expect my life to be complete without one? What a fool I have been.

Applications on a postcard please.

France’s shame

Posted on February 8, 2007 by Helena

Yesterday I spent the day in Toulouse with Denise Epstein, the daughter of Irene Nemirovsky (see ‘We’ve never had it so good‘ blog below). Ever since I heard about Irene being carted off Auschwitz in front of her two daughters and read her brilliant book about the war, I have been obsessed with her story. I know there are millions of stories out there, most of which will never be told, but hers has really touched me.

Her daughter lives in a modest flat in Toulouse. She is now 77. She is a tiny woman but with a strength that shines through. Even now, after all these years, every time she talks about her mother tears well up in her eyes. One of the most interesting things she told me was that the characters in Suite Francaise are all based on real people that the family knew.

More shocking was the fact that it was the French police, not the Nazis, who pursued her and her little sister Elizabeth after her parents had been murdered. At the time she was thirteen and her sister was only five. She said they had a policy of deporting orphans because they knew what an economic catastrophe thousands of Jewish orphans would be for France. In fact when they were finally caught and arrested the Nazi officer they were taken to said he had no orders to deport them and told them to scarper.

It seems inconceivable that one can be arrested simply for belonging to a certain race. What’s to stop the French suddenly turning against the Brits here and stopping them from working, leading normal lives, owning property and then eventually carting them off to concentration camps? It seems far-fetched, but it happened to the Jews. I’m sure one of the reasons Irene didn’t simply leave France with her family when she could is that she didn’t believe it would actually happen to her. Maybe I would be the same. No, on second thoughts now that I know her story, I don’t think I’d take the chance. At the first sign of trouble we’d be off.

The greatest living Englishman

Posted on February 5, 2007 by Helena

I am at Stansted Airport, a strange place to be at 4.30 am but my flight leaves at 6 am. Yesterday I had one of those days that make me wonder why we ever left England. I went for a long walk first thing in the morning, watched the mist rise over the sunny, frosty fields, ducks swim along the canal, geese fly overhead and dogs frolic in the freezing water.
Then I headed off to Cambridge where I had a meeting with an anti-ageing guru in a pub for my next book. In the background Wales were playing Ireland in the Six Nations. The professor drank John Smith bitter and everything was as English as you can get. After that I had a walk around the town and not for the first time in my life regretted not having been an undergraduate there. I stayed with some lovely friends who cooked me a lamb dinner and looked after me superbly. Then to bed and a slightly restless night in anticipation of the early start.

Jonny I spoke to my husband and told him I was worried we had made a bad decision moving to France. Maybe it was time to reconsider. “Don’t be deceived,” he said. “England is a mad and dangerous place, peopled by drunks and lunatics, except for the greatest living Englishman, J. Wilkinson Esq.”

He has a point. Jonny is without doubt the greatest living Englishman. But another even more pertinent point is that opposite my friend Carla’s house where I had the idyllic country walk is a house for sale. It is, in total, about the size of my bedroom at home and is on the market for £250,000. The same amount we paid for our vast farmhouse with land and swimming pool just over six years ago. Much as I love the Oxfordshire countryside, the thought of living in a shoe-box with all my children, the cat and the dog makes me happy to be going home to France.

How the other half lives

Posted on February 2, 2007 by Helena

I receive an unusual text message today. “Your chauffeur, Michael, has arrived,” it reads. “Silver Mercedes E Class.” Thank God it’s an E Class, I wouldn’t be seen dead in anything else.
I swan out of the Lagham Hotel accompanied by a little man carrying my luggage, the doorman opens the door to the E Class, smiles obsequiously and says: “Thank you for staying with us.”

The E Class purrs into action and whisks me to the Richard & Judy studios in Lambeth. There another man opens the car door for me, someone takes care of my luggage and I am shown to a dressing room with my name written on the door. After approximately three seconds someone called Zoe shows up and asks what I’d like to drink. Then Lorraine from make-up whisks me away to transform me into a glamour puss with the help of Suzie the hairdresser. When I get back to my room my publicist Rina has arrived and tells me how gorgeous I look and how brilliant I’ll be.

Then the hard work. I have to go on television to defend my argument in this week’s Daily Mail that women of a certain age should make more of an effort to look good as opposed to less. Pitted against me is Lauren Booth (sister of Cherie) who wrote an article saying she is happy with her expanding waistline and wrinkles. When I can get a word in, I think I get my point across. My adversary has rather strangely just as long in hair and make-up as I did which I think rather contradicts her argument, but anyway.

After the show I walk out to yet another slick Mercedes.

My phone rings, it’s Bea. “I didn’t like that girl,” she says. “She was evil with you.” Then I speak to Leo. “Mummy, that dress was so lovely for you.”

I think he was referring to my glittery top. Just his sort of thing.

At Marylebone Station I am in for a shock. Gone are the little men to open doors and carry my bags. Instead I am surrounded by people talking on their mobile phones or reading the Evening Standard. The train bound for Bicester and my friend Carla’s house is packed and the lighting terrible. The décor is terrible too. Who designs trains anyway? Not someone from the Mercedes team, that’s for sure.

As I longingly remember my two hours as a TV star I think about the fact that there are people who live like that the whole time. What joy. But then maybe without the contrast you would cease to notice.

You can take the girl away from the flu but

Posted on February 1, 2007 by Helena

Two Lipsticks & A Lover ….you can’t take the flu away from the girl. So here I am in London. Yesterday was a great day and further to my report (see blog below on Blighty) I can safely say that at least viewed from central London Britain is a very nice place to be. The sun was shining all day, people speak English (such an easy language to understand) and are always cracking jokes. The shops are full of lovely things and I had as good a lunch in a French restaurant as I’ve ever had in France.

The worst part was the flight over. As I had to delay my trip due to the killer flu I was unable to arrive by train, my preferred method, but instead flew Ryanair.

To me, one of life’s great mysteries, along with the Bermuda Triangle and falling in love, is WHY air hostesses insist on standing over you when you’re fast asleep and yelling “any drinks?” in your ear. Can I just say to any air hostess who happens to reading this: if a person is sitting with their eyes shut and looking generally peaceful you can assume they are either asleep or dead. Neither of which state requires “any drinks”.

Anyway I slept pretty well last night but have woken up with a familiar pain in my throat and chest. This is unfortunate as Two Lipsticks and a Lover comes out in paperback today and I have seven hours of local radio interviews. The upside I suppose though is assuming I don’t have a coughing fit on air, I will at least sound suitably husky and sexy, which might sell a few more books.