helena frith powell

  • Lifestyle
  • Women
  • Beauty
  • France
  • Contact

Dangerous or just desperate?

12th February 2007 by Helena 2 Comments  

This evening we were having a late dinner alone (the children had already eaten) when Olivia came rushing into the kitchen.

“Please come downstairs and watch the film with us, it’s scary, there’s an evil man on the roof.”

The film she was talking about is Oliver Twist. This is not the first time she has been scared by a film. A Christmas Carol had them all quaking on Boxing Day. The graveyard scene in Great Expectations still makes them shudder, even though they’ve seen it at least twenty times.

Scary?

Aside from what most people would call suitable viewing (like the above) my children also watch Desperate Housewives and Grey’s Anatomy. Always with me. Not from any sense of parental responsibility but because I don’t want to miss an episode.

A lot of my friends and relations think this is a bad thing. They think I’m irresponsible. Maybe they’re right. But here’s the thing (as Meredith would say) they have never once been frightened by anything that happens in either of those programmes. I think because they’re so far removed from their world that they’re simply not scary to them. They don’t relate to them on that level, unlike Oliver Twist who is a child and whose suffering they can assimilate.

I asked a pediatrician friend of mine recently if I was wrong to let them watch these soaps.

“Can they do any lasting damage?” I asked.

She laughed. “No, not at all. But what you have to remember is that they love watching them so much because they watch them with you.”

Well, here’s the thing; the feeling’s mutual.

Copyright: Helena Frith Powell 2007


Filed Under: Children, Family, Life, blog --> Tagged With: dangerous, desperate

2 thoughts on Dangerous or just desperate?

  • janejill says:
    16th February 2007 at 7:40 pm

    I LOVE Desp Hwives (though it does dip a bit )My children are grown-up (or so they tell me) so I am fated to watch it either alone or “pretend alone” – my “Jack” peeps out from behind the newspaper, saying he is just keeping “an eye” on it… I miss the children , especially as I still cannot operate the Video recorder (about 8 years old and very well- travelled – France for 2 years, then onto Spain and now back in Surrey 😉 it Still refuses to do anything but blink.. what will I do when I go off to Antigua again next week…..so tough

  • Rachel says:
    24th February 2007 at 1:36 pm

    Well, I am 25 and I too very much enjoy the very few precious evenings when I am able to curl up on the sofa and watch TV with my mother. As I no longer live at home, these evenings are few and far between; I have now been known to indulge in my mother’s penchant for ER, despite the fact that it isn’t really my thing, just to have an excuse to watch it with her!

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 */ /* ----------------------------------------- */