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A pressing question

2nd February 2011 by Helena 3 Comments  

At 2am yesterday morning Leo came into my room.

“Mummy,” he announced. “Do you know there are people in my class who think Pele is better than Messi?”

Then he got into my bed and fell asleep, leaving me to ponder his question, along with all the other thoughts that helpfully keep mothers awake in the early hour like will your children ever find true love, or learn to spell properly, or be kidnapped by some evil monster.

Regular readers of this blog will know about me and sleep, they will have read about the fraught relationship we have and know all about the international conspiracy to keep me awake. Now of course they have recruited my son.

I have decided that there is no cure for my insomnia (falling asleep is not the issue by the way, I can fall asleep with great ease, the problem is if I get woken up I then can’t get back to sleep) but there are ways to deal with it.

My father’s advice was never to take sleeping pills but to get up and write instead. Maybe his theory is that if anything can send me to sleep, it is my own prose. I have come up with a less prosaic solution – go to the 24-hour supermarket. This morning I was there at 5.45am, grabbing all the best fruit and veg as they were unpacked and roaming the empty aisles planning our weekend’s fodder.

But I still haven’t worked out who was the better footballer….

Copyright: Helena Frith Powell 2011


Filed Under: blog --> Tagged With: pressing, question

3 thoughts on A pressing question

  • Brett Jefferson Stott says:
    3rd February 2011 at 10:00 am

    Your dad’s theory made me laugh! I think I have the answer to the question, but I am afraid it is another question.
    Who is the better band the Beatles or the King’s of Leon? Generations will disagree I am sure…

  • Nina says:
    4th February 2011 at 9:12 am

    Just got your brand new book!
    I know I `m not going to sleep this weekend…

  • Helena says:
    6th February 2011 at 2:00 am

    OMG! You must be the first one to have it – oh help, I so hope you like it x

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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 working on a thriller called Thin Ice that will be published in 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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