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A sporting bore

27th January 2011 by Helena 1 Comment  

I am officially a tennis bore. I play four times a week, more if I can. A day without tennis feels somehow sad. I talk about it all the time. I wept today when Rafa and Federer were knocked out of the Oz Open. I am reading Andre Agassi’s autobiography. To top it all, last night as I was falling asleep I kept waking myself my jerking my arm. Yes, I was hitting a forehand (down the line) in my sleep.

“My first wife became a golf bore, and you are becoming a tennis bore,” Rupes said to me the other day. ‘What’s wrong with me?”

Well, I’m not sure he should blame himself. I was mad about tennis way back when Virginia Wade won Wimbledon, but it is only in the past two months that it has really taken hold of me. I think one of the reasons this has happened is that I met Rafa, and Federer, and also that I can finally hit the bloody ball properly.

Leo of course is already a football bore, aged only seven. Every night before he goes to sleep he goes around his room saying goodnight to the various Chelsea players on his walls. “Goodnight Frank,” he says. “Goodnight Didier, goodnight John Terry.”

I am not quite that bad yet, but I do have a picture of a topless Rafa hidden on my filing cabinet that I sometimes say good morning to when I get into work. But I don’t think anyone has noticed…..

Copyright: Helena Frith Powell 2011


Filed Under: Sport, blog --> Tagged With: sporting

One thought on A sporting bore

  • Catherine says:
    30th January 2011 at 9:06 am

    Hi Helena, sounds like you’ve had to take the ‘if you can’t beat them, then join them’ approach when it comes to sport in your household.
    Although we all know that golf is REALLY boring whereas tennis is a great game!
    So long as you don’t have posters of players on your walls and say goodnight to them, I don’t see that Rupert has anything to complain about.
    Catherine

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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. She is working on a thriller set in Sweden as well as a novel about the relationship between Virginia Woolf and Katherine Mansfield called Sense of an Echo.

In 2022 her short story The Japanese Gardener came second in the Fish Publishing Short Story Prize. One of her stories was also shortlisted for the Bridport Short Story Prize. When she’s not writing, she works as a headhunter for the media and entertainment industry for the Sucherman Group. 

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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