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Harvest Festival

21st October 2011 by Helena Leave a Comment  

For about an hour this week, I could have been in Wiltshire. I went to Leo’s Harvest Festival at the church next to his school. The children sang hymns and harvest songs, we said a few prayers of thanks and the head of the primary school made a little speech.
As we filed out, I bumped into the (Welsh) headmaster and we had a chat about the hideous rugby world cup semi-final. Then I stepped outside into 40 degree heat and my illusion was shattered.

Rupert teases me about my obsession with Wiltshire. For some reason I have a notion that if we lived there in a large thatched cottage somewhere on the edge of a field, our lives would be perfect. I imagine driving the children to school along a windy road with high hedges either side and wild flowers in the ditches. Dropping them at the school gate and heading off to Waitrose to do the thrice-weekly shop before going home to work on my latest book in a office with central heating instead of air conditioning.

The reality is probably that we would be living next to a water-logged field, impenetrable without a boat for most of the year, that Waitrose would be packed full of people and utterly hideous, and that the roads on the way to school would be jammed with people with road rage and we would be broke from paying endless tax.

But until I try it, I won’t believe it.

Copyright: Helena Frith Powell 2011


Filed Under: Britain, Life, blog --> Tagged With: festival, harvest

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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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