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Who is your darling?

28th April 2008 by Helena 1 Comment  

MickLeonardo is only four but showing great foresight when it comes to his domestic future.

“When I live here with my darling,” he told me the other day, “you can live by the trampoline.” The trampoline is on the lawn, conveniently close to the pool but really not convenient for anything else. Still, I will do as I’m told and am already planning to have it re-upholstered pink.

“Who will your darling be?” I asked him, secretly hating her already, like any doting mother would.

“I don’t know,” he replied. “But she will have long hair and we will kiss on the lips.”

My mother has been here for a few days. It’s been amazing. Like having a clone of myself running around doing all the things I do. Now she has gone, leaving the house immaculate and the washing and ironing piles non-existent. This is the first time that’s happened since she was here last year.

Last night Leonardo asker her who her darling was.

“You,” she replied.

“But I don’t want to marry you,” he said, looking horrified.

“OK, then mummy is my darling,” said my darling mummy.

“Nooooo, she’s already got Daddy,” Leonardo said shaking his head.

“Right. My cats. They’re my darlings,” said my mother.

“But they don’t got no lips,” came the response.

So now you know, a darling has to have long hair and lips. No wonder Mick Jagger is so popular.

Copyright: Helena Frith Powell 2008


Filed Under: blog --> Tagged With: darling

One thought on Who is your darling?

  • Brenda Pizzo says:
    7th May 2008 at 10:15 pm

    Dear Helena,
    I think you are a scream! I just discovered you when I bought your book “All you need to know to be impossibly French.” So happy to know there is more where that came from.

    Dying to know what you look like, I googled you. You’ll be relieved to know you pass the test. You are very attractive and hilarious. A wonderful combination.

    I’m enjoying your blog and I love the exchange with your son on his future darling.

    I’m American (also Swedish and Italian descent like you) and have British relatives. On one visit to Clacton-on-Sea, I bought a wooly lamb toy for my husband’s cousin’s little boy. I asked him what he was going to call it, and he said, “my little darlin'” but I never expected a four year old to call anything darling and mistook the name as Maggie Starling and equally ridiculous name for a stuffed toy. Ah, well, we laugh at that a decade or more later.

    Anyway, the world is a better place with you in it.

    -Brenda

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Helena Frith Powell was born in Sweden to a Swedish mother and Italian father, but grew up mainly in England. She is the author of eleven books, translated into several languages including Chinese and Russian. She wrote the French Mistress column The Sunday Times about life in France for several years. She is a regular contributor to the Daily Mail, Mail on Sunday, The Times, Daily Telegraph, Tatler Magazine and Harper’s Bazaar.

Helena has been the editor of four magazines, including M Magazine, a supplement for the Abu Dhabi based National Newspaper and FIVE, a high-end fashion glossy, also published in Abu Dhabi. Helena was also editor in chief of 360 Life, a quarterly glossy magazine published with the Sports 360 Newspaper in Dubai, part of the Chalhoub Group.

Helena contributes regularly to UK-based newspapers and magazines and holds a Masters in Creative Writing from the University of Cambridge. Helena is also working on a thriller called Thin Ice that will be published in spring 2021 as well as a novel about the relationship between Virginia Woolf and Katherine Mansfield called Sense of an Echo.

Her latest non-fiction work Smart Women Don’t Get Wrinkles came out in hardback in 2016 and in paperback in April 2018.

Helena, who was educated at Durham University, lives in the Languedoc region of France with her husband Rupert and their three children.

Bibliography

More France Please, we’re British; Gibson Square 2004

Two Lipsticks and a Lover 2005; Gibson Square (hardback)

All You Need to be Impossibly French; (US version of above) Penguin 2006

Two Lipsticks and a Lover; Arrow Books (paperback) 2007

Ciao Bella Gibson Square; (hardback) 2006

Ciao Bella Gibson Square; (paperback) 2007

So Chic! (French version of Two Lipsticks) Leduc Editions 2008 (also translated into Chinese, Russian and Thai)

More, More France; Gibson Square 2009

To Hell in High Heels; Arrow Books 2009 (also translated into Polish)

The Viva Mayr Diet; Harper Collins 2009

Love in a Warm Climate; Gibson Square 2011

The Ex-Factor; Gibson Square 2013

Smart Women Don’t Get Wrinkles; Gibson Square 2016

The Arnolfini Marriage; Amazon Kindle December 2016

Smart Women Don’t Get Wrinkles (paperback); Gibson Square spring 2018

The Longest Night; Gibson Square spring 2019

 

 

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