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Change is good…I hope

30th January 2013 by Helena Leave a Comment  

Change is good I keep telling myself, as I lie awake at 3am most mornings contemplating the magnitude of the plans we have.
In April Leo goes off to boarding school in Surrey. All being well, the girls will go too. Not to Woodcote where he is headed, although a boys’ school might suit them, but to one of the schools we visited last week.
We are due to hear from two of them any day now, and there are two more exams to sit for the others.
Once again I was surprised and pleased by how happy the girls were in England, they just seem to settle in straight away, despite the snow. Here is Bea on Clapham Common in, yes, a onesie, the latest hideous trend to hit the UK. She even wore hers to the Chelsea game, under her Chelsea dressing gown (nothing eccentric about Bea).
If they all go in April we will move to a smaller place when our lease is up here in March. First and foremost to save money to pay for all the school fees, but also because I don’t feel like rattling around this place gazing at their bedrooms and weeping because they’re not here. So we have that change to think about.
There is also massive change on the work front. I left the magazine I was working on at the end of December, and have some very exciting plans, but more on those when all is finalised.
I finished the latest book yesterday, 75,059 words. Am already thinking about the next one. And then there is the kitchen at Sainte Cecile….just to add to our outgoings we are putting in a new one, we hope in time for Easter when we will be there.
So quite enough to keep me awake at night, without the jet-lag. But as Winston Churchill said: “To improve is to change; to be perfect is to change often.” By the end of March I should be perfection personified….

Copyright: Helena Frith Powell 2013


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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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