On Thursday someone I have not seen since 1990 showed up in town. Like most of my friends he is an investment banker and much richer than me. So it was no surprise that he showed up in a chauffeur-driven car carrying well-worn Louis Vuitton luggage. What did surprise me though is that he looked EXACTLY THE SAME as he did when I last saw him circa 19 years ago at a dinner party in London.

When I saw my best friend Iona in India l realised she was practically identical too. And I first met her in 1986. Actually she looks better now. She attributes her youthful appearance to plenty of time off and no children.

I didn’t dare ask these friends how I look for fear they would wince and say ‘well actually, you do look a bit rough, but not bad considering you’ve had three children and worked like a dog for 20 years.’ But is it possible that there is some part of our brains that not only recognises old friends, but ages them in milliseconds so that actually once we register who they are they don’t look a day older than 19?

Does that make sense? Possibly not. But if you’re confused imagine how I feel? Soon my friends will be younger than my children.

Copyright: Helena Frith Powell 2009

When I was growing up in Berkshire I was mad about horses. One of my favourite stories I tell the children as I try to make them understand how lucky they are is how I used to muck out stables all weekend in exchange for one hour’s riding on a chestnut pony called Conkers.

There was nothing I liked better than a horsey weekend. This weekend has been just that. On Friday I went off to Dubai for the Cartier Cup. It was a glitzy, glamorous event with pink champagne, diamonds and even film stars. Monica Bellucci was there (born in the same year as me, we have so much in common), as well as Anil Kapoor of Slumdog Millionaire fame. Unlike most events you go to where film stars are surrounded with hundreds of fans, I actually got to speak to both of them. I said hello to Monica as she wafted past me looking splendid in white trousers, a purple diaphanous shirt and panama hat. Anil Kapoor looked every bit the villain he played in the film.

“Great film,” I said. “I hated you of course.”

“Good,” he laughed. “You were meant to hate me.”

A friend was invited by local dignitaries to his VIP box just a few metres from the Villa Cartier. She was jolly pleased with herself until I asked her what the champagne over her way was like.

“You have alcohol?” she wailed. It is important at these events to chose one’s VIP box wisely.

Today it was the Dubai World Cup. It was altogether a more brash and bigger do, but not as much fun. There is a competition for the best-dressed lady. The winner gets $8,000 and a holiday to Thailand. The winner of the main horse race gets a cool $6 million. Credit crunch, what credit crunch?

Copyright: Helena Frith Powell 2009

The answer is a lot. Yesterday I took the day off work, collected the children from school at midday and went off to see the Bolshoi rehearse Giselle at the Emirates Palace Hotel. It was wonderful. The director was shouting instructions in Russian and all the dancers were wearing their cool training kit. The quality of dancing was astounding. Olivia and Leo loved it, sadly Bea declared that ballet is her “worst thing” and it was “the worst day of her life”.

All that changed for Bea when we got to the Cultural Foundation for a production of Angelina Ballerina by the English National Ballet. The dancers were dressed as mice, which must make dancing very tricky, and it was very sweet if you are keen on dancing mice. I was pleased to hear Olivia say to a friend that it wasn’t a patch on Giselle, and not surprised when Bea declared the ballet dancers “better than the Bolshoi”. They will be pleased.

Fast forward to the evening and Olivia and I are all dressed up, waiting for the actual performance of Giselle to begin. she was the most charming date; kept telling me how happy she was and how beautiful I am. We were both entranced by the first act but sadly by the second she had started to flag. She saw the glorious entrance of the corps de ballet and then crashed out. I followed soon after. It was brilliant and I loved it but I just could not stay awake. I am wondering if I can sneak in this evening just to see the second act.
I guess even for the most ardent balletomane there is only so much you can take in during one day….

Copyright: Helena Frith Powell 2009

It is easy to forget as you sit sipping your Starbucks in a shopping mall surrounded by shops you have shopped in for years that you are living in the Middle East. But sometimes there are reminders. The other day for example, we saw a camel in the back of a pick-up truck. You don’t get many of those in Chelsea.

Yesterday there was a sand-storm. You feel like you’re in Star Wars as the sand flies around you and I was half expecting to see some of those evil little sand people. Actually you can’t really see anything, it’s quite amazing. Rather like a really bad snow-storm. And rather like snow, the sand leaves a layer on cars and lamp posts.

The other thing that has struck me recently is that everyone keeps saying how “unseasonably hot” it is. That’s a phrase you had to be alive during the heatwave of 1976 to hear in England. Not that I was, of course….

Yesterday was Mother’s Day and the girls sang me a Mother’s Day song in Arabic. I remember when I used to find them singing in French exotic. Now that seems almost mundane. Although slightly more comprehensible than Arabic. But only slightly.

Copyright: Helena Frith Powell 2009

There is an exhibition of photographs by Henri Cartier-Bresson at the Emirates Palace Hotel. We went along, partly because he was brilliant, but also because we are ever-so-tenuously related. He was my uncle Bertrand’s uncle. I met him a couple of times in Rome when I was a teenager. I wish now I had been more aware of the man and his Leica.

I love the idea of the defining moment – the concept he described as the time when you take a great photograph, capturing the essence of something. Since we saw the exhibition I have been on the look-out for defining moments of my own.

I saw one yesterday. I was at a traffic light, a worker was crossing the road in the midday heat wearing a selection of rags on his head to keep the sun off and dirty clothes. His eyes, as they looked towards me in my air-conditioned car, seemed almost lifeless. There was no hope in them, no interest, I don’t think he even cared if he got run over. Behind him four lanes of expensive air-conditioned cars whizzed by.

In a photograph he would have been static in front of all these moving monuments to riches he will never have. I didn’t take the picture, I didn’t even have a camera with me, but the image has stayed in my mind, just like so many of the Cartier-Bresson photographs we saw have.

Life here is always interesting. Today I am going to interview the opera diva Angela Gheorghiu. I am half-scared that she will throw a shoe at me for asking the wrong question (another defining moment) and half excited. Last night I interviewed Dannii Minogue. It was my first interview with a pop star. She was sweet, with vast fake eyelashes and pink satin dress, but it was a little like talking to someone’s teenage au-pair. In fact I found it quite hard to think of what to ask her, especially as I had been told to stay off certain subjects, like Kylie’s breast cancer. But if there was a defining moment in the interview, that was it. She mentioned the cancer, and tears welled up in her eyes.

I had a verbally defining moment from Leo yesterday on the way back from football.

“Mummy, when I grow up I am going to be boss,” he said, and then he paused. “But if you’re a boss, you can’t really go to the beach.”

That boy has his priorities well sorted out. Let me know if you come across any defining moments.
Copyright: Helena Frith Powell 2009

So, it gets worse. Yesterday I woke up practically unable to breathe without my nose running. By 9am I had used a whole box of tissues. At 12pm I was due at an event at the Swiss Ambassador’s residence organised by his wife.

“I love all your books,” she said. “It would be such fun if you could pop along.”

Never one to let my readers down I heave myself off my sick bed and drive to her, very posh and large, residence. I know I have arrived as the speed bump outside the villa is painted red and white. I walk up to the front door and open it expecting everyone to be out in the garden or elsewhere. I walk into a room with perhaps 40 wives of ambassadors listening to a talk which, it immediately becomes apparent as the Swiss ambassador’s wife manouvers me and my box of tissues towards a chair centre-stage, I am meant to be part of.

I see To Hell in High Heels prominently displayed. I wonder if Two Lipsticks is there and frantically try to remember if I wrote anything about how a French woman would cope with a constantly running nose and Rudolf the red-nosed reindeer look.

“I would like to introduce the famous English journalist and writer, Helena Frith Powell,” says Yael from the Clinique La Prairie who is leading the presentation and looking totally perfect in a little black dress and delicate heels. I sneeze. The Ambassadors’ wives look unimpressed. I don’t think my appearance did much for book sales.

Copyright: Helena Frith Powell 2009

Not that I am normally one to grumble but…

Due to my back still being sore, I have not been doing much exercise and so am getting fat

Work changed the whole mail system and all of our emails were down for two days, some lost forever

School Fees are going up by at least 25% from next year

I have had a horrible sore throat for three days

Someone sent me a picture of himself aiming a gun on Facebook (bye bye Facebook)

Next week will be better I’m sure. I am having lunch with the author Amitav Ghosh, as well as meeting the Swedish crime writer Henning Mankell. They are going to be here for the Abu Dhabi Book Fair. Tomorrow my working week starts with a facial. I am researching an article into how to stay young in the sun. As opposed to how to stay fat and grumpy, which is me right now.

End of rant.

Copyright: Helena Frith Powell 2008

My in-laws arrived for a week’s visit yesterday. Yesterday I spent the evening with my father-in-law trying to get his hearing aid fixed. He is an example of how to go through life; happy and charming. We went to the Oxford Medical Centre first.

“Do you think I get a discount having been at Oxford?” he asked me. I said it was worth a try. Then we went into the building and explained the problem to the receptionist.

“I can see how lovely you are,” said my father-in-law. “But I can’t hear you.”

Sadly they couldn’t help but they gave us the name of somewhere that could. On the way out a group of youths were standing by my car.

“I wish those youths would get away from my car,” I snarled in my typical ‘expecting the worst’ fashion. My father-in-law walked towards them without a moment’s doubt. They moved aside and opened the door for him.

“It’s nice to see the young still have some manners,” he said to them before turning to me. “And I include you in that.”

Told you he was charming.

As I write he is on the golf course, aged 84, probably beating Rupert and our friend James (who is even younger than moi). That’s how to age gracefully.
Copyright: Helena Frith Powell 2009

As I said, Bea and Olivia could not join Facebook because they are too young. Instead they joined the BBC’s social networking site for kids. This is Bea’s bio, which was sent to me as I had to approve it before it went live:

my name is bea and i love singging and i love dancing i love watching tele but not all the time i love playing lots of games i have 2 sisters and 2 brothers my little brother is called leonardo and hes five years old he loves spiderman then my oldest sister she is called jullia and she is 15 years old my other oldest sister is 10 she is named olivia then i have my oldest brother named hugo he is 16 years old i live at abu dhabi at 25 strret little 8 street i love shopping my secret is that i love a boy in france he has black hair and he’s like me

It was the last sentence that broke my heart. I asked Olivia if it is the boy I suspect it is, the one she has always loved, a little cutie called Julien who was in her class and is the son of the local woodman (who is also quite cute).

“Yes,” she said. “She sometimes thinks she sees him in the street and then she thinks ‘oh he’s here in Abu Dhabi’ but it’s never him.”

I haven’t talked to Bea about it, Olivia says I’m not meant to know.

I feel terrible dragging her away from her first love and even more terrible that I had no idea she even thought about him any more.
Copyright: Helena Frith Powell 2009

For about a year before I started this blog, people were telling me about the wonders of blogging and how I should get on to it. I thought I was too old and it all seemed like a bit too much hassle. But something in my mind kept nagging at me and I kept thinking that I really ought to start a blog, much in the same way one thinks ‘I ought to do some exercise’.

I went to stay with my friends Tim and Annika and Tim, a computer whizz, set a blog up for me. Of course I was immediately hooked.

In a similar vein I have long resisted Facebook. Partly because my teenage stepchildren are on it and it seems slightly ridiculous, if not sad, to be on the same networking site as people I have changed nappies for. I also think it is slightly disconcerting for them. Just imagine the embarrassing photos I could post.

But everyone kept going on at me and last night I succumbed.

It started with Olivia asking me to join for her. We tried it and she was too young. Then I thought, soon I will be too old, and went for it. I have two friends so far and am not really sure what I am supposed to do next but guess it will come with time and practice. Rupert thinks I will become obsessed, but I am determined to remain calm. I was very excited though when I read ‘Helena joined Facebook at 9.54pm’. It is unusual for me to be up that late, let alone be ‘facebooking’ or whatever they call it.

Rupert also tells me my mother is on Facebook. I wonder whether she will be my friend, or if, rather like my stepchildren, she would prefer to keep me well away from her facebook life….Rock on Mamma!

Copyright: Helena Frith Powell 2009