Helena Frith Powell

I just had to show you all this…….we went shopping yesterday and Leo fell in love with his first ever suit. It is from Marks & Spencer and I think he looks quite divine, but then I normally do think that. Leo and Marks & Spencer, an irresistible combination……..

In yesterday’s paper there was a profile of Omar Sharif. It mentioned all sorts of important milestones, like when he starred in Dr Zhivago and Lawrence of Arabia, but it did omit one key event that I’m sure changed his life.
Well, maybe not, but it certainly meant I will spend the rest of my life telling the story……
I was around 17 I guess, a sillier girl would be hard to imagine. I was at the London nightclub Tramp and it had been a long evening.
As I stumbled up the stairs on my way out with some friends a rather elegant figure was walking down them towards me. I recognised him immediately.

“You’re the guy in the Persil ad, aren’t you?” I said, swaying slightly and looking up at him.
He smiled, put his hand on my shoulder and said in that gorgeous deep voice “amongst other things”.
I am hoping he is coming to the Middle East International Film Festival which is held here in October so I can remind him of our first meeting. I may be the only person alive who remembers him in the Persil ad. I’m sure he’ll be thrilled.
Helena Frith Powell 2009

Am I the only person out there who isn’t saving any money? A financial advisor came to see me the other day and suggested we put away some cash every month for our future. “Even if it’s only 500 pounds a month”.
Only 500 pounds?? I almost fell off my chair. We’d be lucky to have 5 pounds a month left over. So I started to try to work out where we could cut corners.

As I write Leo is learning to play the piano. We spend hundreds of pounds a year on their “activities” which include golf, tennis, ballet, musical theatre, football and guitar. The music lessons are by far the most expensive. So far all Leo really does is play Old McDonald had a farm over and over and over again. But I’m sure things will improve.
Playing the piano is one the things I always wish I could do. In fact in England I even started having lessons. I never got to the giddy heights of Old McDo but I loved it.
So what else? Well, there are life’s little luxuries like Laura Mercier Primer, matching underwear and manicures. Can I do without them? No, obviously not. What about Rupert’s golf lessons? Those we can definitely do without, he’s good enough at golf. If he gets too good at he’ll beat his boss, then he’ll never get a pay rise and we’ll never start saving.
Copyright: Helena Frith Powell 2009

You couldn’t make it up. The trial of former French Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin for allegedly plotting a smear campaign against the man he affectionately calls “the dwarf” and known to the rest of the world as Nicolas Sarkozy, President of France is just the most amazing tale of political betrayal and lust for power.
Just his name is like something from Dangerous Liaisons. Dominique Marie Francois Rene Galouzeau de Villepin. Can you imagine? How his parents ever remembered the whole thing is a mystery.
I have to admit I always found him rather attractive. “At last,” I sighed when he showed up on French news. “An attractive man in politics.” The Silver Fox could certainly have turned me into a Jemimah Puddleduck. He is suave, intellectual and deeply dodgy in a rather aristocratic manner. Just the sort of man we all know we should avoid but can’t help wanting to get close to.

Anyway now it seems we may have to queue up at the prison gates to catch a glimpse of him. If convicted of trying to discredit Sarko he will face up to five years behind bars.
But somehow I just can’t imagine it happening. Sometimes villains triumph, but we don’t mind too much. Especially is they are French and rather posh. And taller than the president (which wouldn’t be too difficult).
Copyright: Helena Frith Powell 2009

Today is a public holiday so Bea came with me to work. This is what she wrote, she called it ‘My first blog’. Here she is relaxing after work in a wig with her sister (Bea is on the right).

how working in an office is like?
well my parents work in an office and i think it’s good but you gotta know what to do !

So my mother works on the magazine that only comes out on saturday’s.

And my father works on the newspaper which comes out every morning.
So my mother works hard everyday off the week to make the magazine as good as she can and my father also hase to word very hard in the week .
But they both write books my father has writen 3 books and my mother has writen 5 books but she is working on a story book which will be called lost in france .
it’s about a mother with three kids they have two twins ones called charlotte and ones called emily and the little boy edward and the mother sophie so they moved to france and had a little house and were making wine and the kids went to school and one day the father came and said you can’t work here and they neeeded to go but they decided to stay in france because they liked it there .
and then for dooing the newspaper you ‘d have to write about hotels and acciedents like the sky news but on a newspaper and my father is a very good person he writtes coloms in the newspaper.
For the magazine it’s the same but it’s fashion and dresses and shoes and boots and jeans and tops .But my mother is a very important person she writtes blogs in the magazine.
but they both also have a little wepsite and have a million blogs on that ,like helena frith powell .com

satutday 2009 september.

Copyright: Beatrice Wright 2009

When I was in Cairo, apart from the incredible Nawal El Saadawi, I met and interviewed one of the country’s most famous film stars; Mona Zaki.
She was lovely. We met at her mother’s house where she fed me Ramadan sweets and tea and we chatted to her young daughter Lily. She couldn’t have been nicer; welcoming, sweet, kind, interesting and very pretty. Whenever she laughs her nose wrinkles which is charming. She was like a smaller, younger version of Julia Roberts.
She reminded me of Ines de la Fressange, the former Chanel muse and model. When I interviewed her for my book about French women she went out of her way to help.
“My motto is to treat everyone like your best friend,” she told me.
They are both in stark contrast to another star, Glenn Close, who was in Abu Dhabi a few months ago. We saw her at the Emirates Palace Hotel. I was with the girls.
“Quick,” I told Olivia. “That’s the woman from 101 Dalmations, ask for her autograph.”

Olivia approached her, pen and paper at the ready.
“Excuse me please, are you the lady from 101 Dalmations?” she asked.
“No,” said Glenn Close, turning away.
Poor Olivia was gutted and of course thought I had got it wrong. Which I hadn’t, there was a big interview with her in our paper the following day.
She should pick up some charm tips from Mona and Ines.
Copyright: Helena Frith Powell 2009

It may be a stupid question, but you can’t help wondering as you wander through the Egyptian museum looking at the remnants from what was one of the world’s greatest ever civilisations: Where did it all go wrong?

How come thousands of years ago they were so rich and so talented and intelligent that they were able to bury people with more riches than it would take several families a lifetime to make in modern Egypt, where people earn around $160 a month if they’re lucky?

I am shocked at how poor this country is, and so is Nawal, the writer and activist I interviewed last night. She of course blames it on economic colonialism. As well as non-secular government and a patriarchal society. “We are forced to eat imported food,” she told me last night. “We are perfectly capable of growing our own, but now our agriculture is non-existent.”

The answer is clearly to put the women in charge and make the men grow the vegetables. Then they can go back to the good old days.

PS In response to Dom’s comment below (as my own website seems to think that my comments are spam and will not let me post any) my point is this: In England today the majority of people do not live below the poverty line. We have a working and a middle class that is prosperous. Here there seems to be no middle class, 99.9% are poor and the others are rich.  Of course peasants in Medieval England were badly off, but the fact is they don’t live in the gutter today or have to send their children out to work.

Copyright: Helena Frith Powell 2009

I have arrived in Egypt. As always my departure was not easy. The morning I was leaving Olivia’s ear infection came back, Bea had a “hurty tummy” and she lost her blue exercise book. Leo had the worst problem of all; a bad hair day.

Anyway I managed to escape and a few hours later found myself on a camel lunging towards the pyramids. Obviously I had my BlackBerry with me (I am on a working trip after all) and in between trying to reach the elusive film star Mona Zaki to set up an interview and confirming appointments for today I saw these symbols of ancient Egypt.

Rupert calls them “proof that man has been a congenital idiot for centuries”. My guide Mohammed also questioned their wisdom: “Mr Go no come back” he told me with confidence.

What did I think of them? Well, to be honest, they look better in pictures. In reality the ground is strewn with rubbish, the animals they give you to ride, horse or camel, look like they have not eaten for weeks (Mohammed blamed their Saudi guests for this) and the prices are extortionate. I did have a brief Lawrence of Arabia moment as the wind picked up and the three pyramids loomed ahead of us. I can imagine the desert can be an extremely beautiful, calming place.

Cairo, on the other hand, is not. Well I have not seen much but compared with Abu Dhabi it just seems so dirty and busy. I guess this is the Middle East without oil wealth. As a Swede I am about as far out of my comfort zone as I ever want to be. On the way to dinner last night I almost fell over the carcass of a rotting ginger cat. The cars all look older than me. Having said that there is something very authentic about it and I may grow to love the chaos the longer I stay. One of my heroines and one of the people I am interviewing today, Nawal El Saadawi, is mad about it, even though they keep putting her in prison.

I have just had a call from Leo, another bad hair day. But the girls are happy so Rupert only has to get the gel and the hairbrush out.

Copyright: Helena Frith Powell 2009

A few evenings ago I went out and left Rupert in charge of the children. The next morning when I got up I found Bea on the sofa reading Proust. In French.
“What’s going on?” I asked him.  He told me he had read them the beginning of A la Recherche du Temps Perdu as a bedtime story the night before. He got out of bed (unusual before his cup of tea) to come and look at Bea.

“Are you enjoying the book?” he asked her.

“I am,” she replied. “But it’s not like a book, more like poetry.”

I think we have a literary critic in the making. And now I can bore people at dinner parties for years to come by boasting “well, of course Bea was reading Proust when she was eight, in the original French, bien sur.”

As for baby Bea, she has read six pages (more than I have ever read) and is still very fond of it. I hope she experiences a similar love affair to the one I had with The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and the Famous Five at her age.

Her new hero Proust describes it very well: “There are perhaps no days of our childhood we lived so fully as those we spent with a favorite book.” 

Copyright: Helena Frith Powell 2009

We have an office assistant on the magazine called Fadwa. She is great. Lebanese but raised in Abu Dhabi. She always has an opinion or something to tell us all. This morning she arrived with a quote of the day which is as follows:

If you marry a monkey for his money, the money might disappear and you will be left with a monkey.

It got me thinking about an article I am writing about so-called Jumeirah Janes. These are basically ladies who lunch, have their nails done and complain about their maids. They often live in an area of Dubai called Jumeirah. Then I started thinking about other girlie stereotypes; Chavs, Sloane Rangers, Valley Girls, Essex Girls.

Can you think of any more? I would love to include several of them from all over the world in the article so send please them over. I was trying to think of a Swedish one but can only come up with a male stereotype: the ‘raggare‘ who drives an old American car and cruises chicks. Or maybe they don’t even exist in any more now that petrol is so expensive.

I end on another one of Fadwa’s bon mots:  A smart man is a man who makes money for his girl to spend. A smart girl is one who finds a man like that.

Nothing stereotypical about that…. Oh and by the way, if Annie Liebowitz is going bust what hope is there for the rest of us?
Copyright: Helena Frith Powell 2009