It was the Duke of Wellington who said: “Publish and be damned.” He was responding to a blackmail threat from Harriette Wilson, the famous courtesan, who was about to publish her memoirs which included details of her lovers.

An article of mine is due to appear in tomorrow’s You Magazine about how my aunt is refusing to speak to me since she read my memoir, Ciao Bella (see publish and be damned blog).

I have tried reconciliation. I wrote her a groveling letter to which I’ve had no response. My father even went to Rome to try to make the peace but got nowhere.

“If you insist on talking about it I shall leave the restaurant,” she said. He tells me she is considering legal action.

It’s not like I used to speak to my aunt every day, or see her very often. But ever since it happened I have had this horrible feeling inside that I get if I think someone doesn’t like me. I used to have it a lot when I was a little girl. I was always so desperate to please and be loved that I was incredibly polite and nice; I would do anything to avoid that feeling of non-approval.

I remember when I was about eight years old in the village we lived there were two girls who had been best friends before I arrived called Alison and Penny. The dynamics were so that we couldn’t all be friends together for some reason. I had to choose between the two. But I was so desperate not to upset either of them I would pretend to be friends with both and often get caught out. It was like having an affair.

I now get that same feeling it if I get a nasty letter about one of my articles or someone posts a dreadful Amazon review of one of my books; although working for the British press I have developed a slightly tougher skin than I had as a little girl.

And of course I don’t go around worrying about my aunt all day long; I have other things to worry about like my hair extensions and what to wear to my book signing this afternoon.

But if I wake up in the middle of the night, it’s often the first thing I think about and I feel just like a little girl longing for approval again.

Copyright: Helena Frith Powell 2007

It was one of those calls I’ll never forget. We were just finishing off lunch when my mobile phone rang. It was a UK mobile number. I wonder who this could be, I thought. But actually deep down I already knew.

“Hi Helena, its Heathcliff.”

We chatted for a while about where he lives, what he’s doing, how old his children are and then he mentioned that he sometimes thought about divorcing his wife. I didn’t like to ask more. The signal was bad so we said goodbye. I told him I will let him know next time I come to England so we can meet up.

But of course I had to know more so I asked our mutual friend. Apparently Heathcliff’s wife is a lesbian. Well, I suppose she wasn’t one when they got married, and they have several children so she’s had a few lapses, but she now makes a habit of spiking his drinks so that she can go out and meet girls. He has woken up several times in the middle of the night fully clothed in the garden. And when he’s stumbled into the house, she is nowhere to be seen.

Did he turn her into a lesbian I wonder? I asked my husband what he would do if he had married a lesbian. “All men marry lesbians,” was his rather enigmatic response, but then it was four o’clock in the morning.

Poor Heathcliff. The hero of my youth stuck with someone who would rather get into bed with his sister, or in fact anyone else’s.

Can I deny that a tiny part of me is rejoicing? That there’s just a minuscule little bit of me that’s saying ‘ha, you should have married me when you had the chance, I got over that lesbianism thing in my teens’. No I can’t.

But what should he do? I guess drink only bottled water from reliable sources, refuse the early morning cuppa or the evening aperitif. Maybe he should try the approach my son tried on me this morning as I refused to give him a piece of chocolate cake to go to school with and smear all over his classmates.

“You’re grounded,” he said shooting me an evil stare. Yes, that might just rein her in.

Copyright: Helena Frith Powell 2007

According to yesterday’s Daily Mail Jemima Khan and Hugh Grant are back together. I’d like to give Ms Khan just one piece of advice. Never trust a man who has shoulders smaller than you do.

When I was in LA recently I had the misfortune of seeing Hugh Grant’s latest film; Music & Lyrics. I went with my screenwriting friend Jennifer (who lost the will to live after the first scene) and Constance, a legal secretary who moonlights as a pilates teacher, actress and stand-up comedienne (only in LA). Anyway, just as we thought things couldn’t get any worse, there was Hugh, naked from the waist up.

“Ugh,” said Constance, burying her head in her popcorn. “He’s soooo British.”

Jennifer nodded. “He has the body of a fourteen-year-old.”

Next day I was wandering down Venice Beach. Apart from the clinically obese men (and there were a few) everyone else seemed to have a decent body. OK, so some of them were young, like the surfer who walked towards me unzipping his wet suit revealing a rather well-formed chest and a six-pack.

That six-pack really got me thinking. And I realised it was the first time I had ever seen one in REAL LIFE. How deprived is that? Growing up in England, you just don’t come across them. Six-packs are not on general view, unless they’re made of hops and malt.

So why is this? Are they much more intellectual? Or just too busy to get to the gym? Do English women not care? Jemima clearly doesn’t.

Copyright:Helena Frith Powell 2007

I see that in this week’s Sunday Times I share the dubious honour of being a columnist alongside Vladimir ‘Stalin’ Putin. I realise that good commentators on Russia are hard to find, mainly because he’s had them all murdered, but I am still horrified.

Since Putin came to power in 2000 fourteen journalists have died in questionable circumstances. I found his column dreary bordering on unreadable. I would have preferred to have read something by the brave and brilliant Anna Politkovskaya but she was gunned down in October last year in the lift of her apartment block. Putin was widely assumed to have ordered the killing due to her coverage of the Chechen war. The latest journalist to die was only a few weeks ago; Ivan Safronov, a military affairs correspondent for Kommersant “fell” from a window.

But Putin is not only murdering journalists. What is happening in Chechnya is beyond belief and now it seems he is not above attacking his own people. His police broke up two anti-government protests recently, arresting the key speakers and beating the protestors. Also reported in the Sunday Times this week was the fact that demonstrators were dragged off trains on their way to demos last week. So much for the “democracy” he so long-windedly drones on about in his less-than-riveting column. Instead of writing this drivel himself, which many of us on the Sunday Times are perfectly capable of doing, he should be allowing journalists in Russia the freedom to express their views without fear of extermination.

I wonder what I will be reading this week? Maybe a column on good farming policy by Robert Mugabe? ‘How to be nice to political dissidents’ by China’s Hu Jintao? ‘Look after your Nobel peace prize winners’ by Burma’s Than Schwe? I can hardly wait for next Sunday.

Copyright: Helena Frith Powell 2007

Apart from the pasta, the most exciting thing to happen to me in Monaco was almost being run over by Prince Albert. I was wandering up a little road towards the palace when a policeman shot round the corner on a motorbike and motioned to me to get out of the way. I just managed to squeeze myself up against a wall before a vast black Mercedes whizzed by carrying the prince himself.

I immediately called my husband to tell him. “It’s not so surprising that you should see him there, he does live there after all,” was his response. “It would be more surprising if I were to see him in Pezenas market, where I’m headed now.”

When I got home I decided to try my prince story out on a less cynical, and captive, audience. Bea and her best friend Manon were in the back of the car as we drove home after an excellent (and smoke-free) dinner at IKEA.

“Girls, guess what?” I said. “When I was in Monaco, I saw a REAL LIVE PRINCE.” They could hardly fail to be impressed by this news, I waited for the hsyterical reaction and questions such as was he wearing a crown, did he kiss you, was he on a horse etc etc.

“Yeah, whatever,” said Bea, not even bothering to look up from the game they were playing. “We prefer princesses.”

Copyright: Helena Frith Powell 2007

Last night I found what I have been dreaming about ever since I knew I was going to Monaco for an anti-ageing conference. A perfectly intimate, family-run Italian restaurant with more pasta on the menu than even I can eat. How sad is that? It reminds me of Johnny Depp who once said that when you get to a certain age you start viewing sleep with the same anticipation as you once used to view drugs.

So I was in heaven as I tucked into my starter of rocket salad with parmesan, reading The Portrait of Dorian Gray and sipping my white wine. Then disaster struck. Two rather nasty looking people sat down next to me and started smoking. It was horrible. Suddenly my rocket salad was covered in second-hand smoke and I could barely see my book.

Before any smokers out there write and tell me I’m over-sensitive can I just say, frankly, get lost. It is you who are in the wrong. Smoking is disgusting, stupid and dangerous and if I want to kill myself with poison I’m quite capable of doing so without any help from you thank you very much. Imagine if I came and sat next to you and spent all evening farting? Would you like that? I suppose as smokers you have no sense of smell left so you probably wouldn’t notice.

Anyway, I couldn’t stand it. So I moved outside. Pathetic isn’t it? I should have told the smokers to move outside and poison the trees instead of me. But unlike Olivia, who had told two hooded youths to pick up their litter after them earlier that day (and they did as well!) I lacked the courage.

Copyright: Helena Frith Powell 2007

Last night we were watching the BBC adaptation of Pride & Prejudice. Colin Firth (Darcy) was in the bath. In marched a servant to pour hot water on him.

“Why can’t he have a bath on his own?” demanded Bea. “Look, he’s all grown-up enough. I don’t need help to have a bath any more.”

“He’s not helping him, that’s his servant,” said Olivia. “We don’t have servants, do we mummy?”

“No,” I said, mopping my brow, gazing at the pile of ironing, “sadly not.”

“Actually,” said Bea. “We do. Mummy is our servant. She makes our bath, cleans our room, cooks us food, washes our clothes.”

“She’s not a servant,” said Olivia. “She’s a mummy.”

And the difference is….??!!

In my next life can I just say that instead of being a mummy/servant, I would like that job pouring water on Colin Firth’s torso? Thanks. I’m going to get on with preparing lunch for my masters now.

Copyright: Helena Frith Powell 2007

If I’d known he was going to get him on the phone I might have prepared myself better. But just how do you prepare yourself for a conversation with someone you were madly in love with as a teenager and haven’t spoken to for over twenty years? No one has written that survival manual yet.

“Where does your mother live?” Marco asked me the other day.

“In Devon, near Tiverton,” I say.

“Hang on a minute, that name rings a bell. Get Heathcliff on the phone for me,” he shouts to one of his minions.

I am praying Heathcliff will be out stomping on the moors, or at least Dartmoor, but oh no, he’s there, and he’s on speaker-phone.

“It’s me,” says Marco. “Where is it you live again?”

“Devon, near Tiverton,” says that voice. That voice that used to send shivers up my spine; that made me the least rational person I knew and that could command anything from me, but sadly never did.

“Hello? Hello?” Marco is yelling at me. I have no choice but to answer.

“Hello.”

“Helena?” says Heathcliff. At least he didn’t say Rachel.

“Hi Heathcliff,” I say trying to sound as if this is the MOST insignificant thing to happen to me all year. “How are you?”

“Good thanks, but this phone is a bit weird, I’m on speaker-phone I think.” Odd to think speaker-phones probably hadn’t been invented the last time we spoke.

“Yes, you sound like you’re in space,” I say.

Heathcliff laughs that dangerously sexy laugh of his. “No,” he says slowly. “I’ve been to space and I’ve come back down.”

“And landed in Devon?” I say.

“Yeah. How about you?”

“I live in France, I have three children…”

“You’ve got children?” he interrupts me.

“No Heathcliff, I’ve been waiting around for you all these years,” I say, silently congratulating myself on coming up with a joke at a time like this. “Anyway, it would be fun to catch up. Are you ever in London?”

Marco interrupts. “This conversation is going far too well and as I’m paying for both calls I’m terminating it.”

And suddenly Heathcliff is gone again. Maybe for another twenty years. So how did the conversation make me feel? I’m ashamed to say, totally weak. Of course in my mind I had an image of the Heatchliff I knew when I was 18. I’m sure by now he’s as old and grey looking as most men of his age and would have no effect on me at all.

But the odd thing was that his voice was identical. And even odder, so was my reaction to it. So I guess my profound (!) conclusion is this: some things never change….

Copyright: Helena Frith Powell 2007

Yesterday we had a picnic at our almond grove. That makes it sound very grand, which it’s not. We have around sixty almond trees and a little hut, known as a mazet. There is about an acre of land with a river at the bottom of it and a vineyard lining one side. We can just see our house from it, up on the hill in the distance.

We invited about twenty friends, everyone brought something, mainly children. They had a great time, building houses out of sticks, wading in the river, cycling up and down the small road, playing with the dogs. As Tom, one friend observed; “Children always seem to move at high speed, imagine if we did the same as adults.” The only high speed thing about the adults was their drinking.

To eat we had oysters, salads, quiches, grilled meats, olives, cheeses, divine chocolate chip cookies and apple tarts; everyone came laden with food, almost all of it home-made and delicious. As a way to have a Sunday lunch-party it beats the hell out of standing over a hot oven praying your roast potatoes will look like they were cooked by Nigella and not Mr Bean.

There was a mixture of French, English, Irish and Australians. A good mix of nationalities. But the one thing all their children will have in common will be that they will, in all probability, speak French for life. Which of course is reason enough in itself to move here. French is possibly the most impossible language to get a grip on (outside the really tricky ones like Chinese and Russian). Practically every time I speak I worry I have got something wrong. The poems my children have to learn off by heart at school seem to get increasingly incomprehensible.

It’s a funny thing. Some days my French seems to work and on others it just stalls, like an old car that hasn’t been started for a few years. Even the children are beginning to notice. When I told Olivia recently I had to watch the French news for work and so we couldn’t watch cartoons she looked at me with pity: “But mummy,” she said. “You don’t understand it anyway.”

Is that why France seems like such a nice place to live?

Copyright: Helena Frith Powell 2007

I am pleased to report that unlike me, Olivia has fallen in love for the first time and he actually likes her too. The object of her affections is Quentin, brother of Maud, Leo’s girlfriend who apparently does love him after all (see Parental Truths Number Two blog).

Leo told me this evening that the reason he knows she loves him is that she came to his house. I didn’t want to disillusion him. I mean she could just have come to watch The Sound of Music, or pick up the Barbie doll she left here last time or even stroke the cat. It’s a bit like the scene in About Last Night when Rob Lowe says to Demi Moore that he noticed her eyeing him up and she says: “There’s a clock above your head.” But good luck to him and better to live with your illusions than not is my view, it’s always worked for me.

I first realised Olivia was in love when she came home and told me there was a “really annoying boy at school” whilst grinning broadly. Then a few days later she told me I would like him because he “looks just like Leo, only bigger.”

I do like Quentin and now that Maud has told Olivia he is in love with her too (but obviously he can’t tell her because he’s “scared” of her) I like him even more. He is a boy with excellent taste in girls, unlike Julien who ignored Bea for more than a year in favour of Noah (I mean please, whoever heard of a girl called Noah?). Anyway, she’s now in love with Dorian, and jolly pleased with himself he is too.

All of them are a bit young to feel the full force of first love but as a taste of what’s to come I leave you with a quote from Turgenev’s short and extremely readable book entitled, guess what? First Love. A bit of a theme over the last few days……

“My blood was in a ferment within me, my heart was full of longing, sweetly and foolishly; I was all expectancy and wonder; I was tremulous and waiting; my fancy fluttered and circled about the same images like martins round a bell-tower at dawn; I dreamed and was sad and sometimes cried. But through the tears and the melancholy, inspired by the music of the verse or the beauty of the evening, there always rose upwards, like the grasses of early spring, shoots of happy feeling, of young and surging life.”

Copyright: Helena Frith Powell 2007