helena frith powell

  • Lifestyle
  • Women
  • Beauty
  • France
  • Contact

Chelsea-Paris-Sainte Cecile-Bramham-Eaton Square

29th June 2012 by Helena 6 Comments  

On Monday the children and I head off on our travels until August 31st. This will be the first time in four years that I will have been away for the summer. We arrived in August 2008 and since then, even if the girls have been able to escape for much of July and August thanks to my mother, we have been here. Poor Leo has had a very lonely birthday every year on July 20th with just us to celebrate with, along with maybe one other unfortunate friend who is not away.
Today is Friday, our weekend, and the children have only been outside to go to lunch or the mall. It is so hot you can’t walk anywhere, even once the sun goes down. Leo is going stir crazy, one day after school has ended. Yesterday afternoon he has his final football session, it was a bit like sauna soccer.
Hence the reason for escaping. We begin in London where we stay for a couple of weeks, then we go to Paris for two days followed by Sainte Cecile for a three-week stint. I always used to think Sainte Cecile in August was boiling hot, but it will probably seem quite temperate after here. After France the kids and I head up to my friends at Bramham while Rupert comes back to work, and then we all meet again at a lovely place we’ve rented in Eaton Square before flying back to Abu Dhabi and the start of school.
For those of you who remember the belle maison, the sad news is that we didn’t get it, so we won’t be heading there. I was heartbroken at the time, but have got over it, and it will be interesting to see how we all feel about our old home, which we were going to sell in order to buy it.
When we left Leo was only four, a tiny boy dressed in a Spiderman suit, and the girls were still very much children. They are coming back as different people. Olivia is thirteen, Bea almost twelve, young ladies really.
Bea is most excited about going to Sainte Cecile, while Olivia is desperate to go to London. Rupert is also looking forward to going home to France, and Leo is really excited about the Chelsea soccer school he is going to for the second week of July. I’m just looking forward to getting away from the heat, any of the above suits me. But it will be lovely to celebrate Leo’s birthday at home, surrounded by friends, fine wine, good food and maybe even a football match on the lawn.

Copyright: Helena Frith Powell 2012


Filed Under: Abu Dhabi, Children, France, blog --> Tagged With: bramham, cecile, chelsea, eaton, paris, sainte

6 thoughts on Chelsea-Paris-Sainte Cecile-Bramham-Eaton Square

  • TeryHeda says:
    9th February 2013 at 1:21 pm

    get chanel online shop NXHfVZul [URL= – fake chanel bags[/URL – and get big save ChJNnlSF

  • Abobiomo says:
    9th February 2013 at 7:25 pm

    get cheap chanel online shop EnTgVnjt [URL= – chanel replica handbags[/URL – to get new coupon MsXVFCzQ

  • emursorm says:
    10th February 2013 at 2:06 am

    you definitely love fake chanel ZUTurPhn [URL= – fake chanel[/URL – with confident RPVbQPUs

  • solospaf says:
    18th February 2013 at 8:54 pm

    click to view cheap chanel handbags rdkorqOc [URL= – knock off chanel bags[/URL – for more tHqtbXlu

  • Abobiomo says:
    21st February 2013 at 7:48 pm

    you definitely love replica chanel HSuUmumV [URL= – chanel replica bags[/URL – suprisely RRNFrFVN

  • Seeromor says:
    25th February 2013 at 7:26 pm

    click to view fake chanel bags LmXqtRSO [URL= – chanel replica[/URL – and check coupon code available jzInrMZT

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

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. She writes a beauty blog www.beautyorbeast.uk.

Her third novel, The Arnolfini Marriage, based on a romance that evolves around a van Eyck masterpiece came out in 2016. As well as contributing regularly for newspapers and magazines, writing short stories and studying for a Masters in Creative Writing at the University of Cambridge, Helena is also working on a thriller called Welcome to Smullö that will be published in spring 2020.

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

Helena was educated at Durham University and lived in the Languedoc region of France for eight years, where the family still have a home. She lives between there and London 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

 

 

© 2019 Helena Frith Powell
Website by Web Inclusion
/* ----------------------------------------- */ /* Content Template: content-template-for-layout-for-header-and-footer-layout - start */ /* ----------------------------------------- */ .helenaHero .mainTitle h1{ font-size:3em; -webkit-transition: all 0.8s; -moz-transition: all 0.8s; -ms-transition: all 0.8s; -o-transition: all 0.8s; transition: all 0.8s; margin-top:-100%; padding-top:100px; padding-bottom:50px; margin:0; } .scrolled .helenaHero .mainTitle h1{ font-size:1.2em; padding-top:30px; padding-bottom:20px; } /* ----------------------------------------- */ /* Content Template: content-template-for-layout-for-header-and-footer-layout - end */ /* ----------------------------------------- */ /* ----------------------------------------- */ /* Content Template: 17hfp_about - start */ /* ----------------------------------------- */ .HFPA-section{ width:100%; background:#eee; } .HFPA-Image{ background-position:center right; background-repeat:no-repeat; height:276px; width:100%; -webkit-filter: grayscale(100%); /* Safari 6.0 - 9.0 */ filter: grayscale(100%); } .HFPA-Text{ padding:20px 10px; } /* ----------------------------------------- */ /* Content Template: 17hfp_about - end */ /* ----------------------------------------- */ /* ----------------------------------------- */ /* Content Template: 17footer - start */ /* ----------------------------------------- */ .footIt{ background:#222; padding:20px 10px; } /* ----------------------------------------- */ /* Content Template: 17footer - end */ /* ----------------------------------------- */