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High at 8am

1st May 2007 by Helena 1 Comment  

It’s not often I am high at 8 o’clock in the morning, but our long journey home begins with a cab ride from Strawberry Hill to a small airport where we get a plane to Montego Bay to catch our Virgin (economy) flight.

 The driver is a rasta and the cab smells very strongly of ganga. Actually it isn’t an unpleasant smell, much nicer than tobacco. The road is windy and so I take deep breaths so as not to throw up. Big mistake. We chat about love, life and religion. I love his attitude. He calls his girlfriend his “empress” and tells us never to fight with each other.

“Sex is the answer,” he says. “You have found freedom through love.”

I carry on breathing deeply and agree with everything. By the time we arrive I am more relaxed than a Jamaican on holiday. This is just as well as the next thing I know we’re hurtling through the sky in a tiny plane which lurches every time it hits a cloud and I can’t get my seatbelt to work.

Thankfully once in Montego Bay we head off for a relaxing lunch and final swim at Round Hill, a lovely spot founded by Mr Pringle. He recently died but his legacy lives on; they serve Pringles at the bar.

Back to Montego Bay airport for the nine-hour flight home in economy. By now the ganga has worn off and I am dreading it with the same intensity I dreaded childbirth.

“Why are you so late?” snaps the charmless person in charge of security.

“Because I was having lunch,” I feel like answering. In fact we’re there an hour and a half before take-off so I don’t know what he had to complain about. I’m the one that had to leave a coconut ice-cream half-eaten.

We check in and are told we have been upgraded to premium economy – yippee. Off we trot in better spirits. Once on the plane it seems there has been a classic bit of Jamaican confusion. We have been allocated seats that people are already sitting in. I have a hunch a miracle is about to take place and pray silently to Jah.

Sure enough. Premium Economy is full. There’s only one thing for it. Into Upper Class we go. As I sip my champagne I look around for a Colin Firth look-alike. Not one to be had sadly. Never mind, I am free through love and Jah is on my side.

Copyright: Helena Frith Powell 2007


Filed Under: Life, Love, Travel, blog -->

One thought on High at 8am

  • spymum says:
    1st May 2007 at 6:59 pm

    Fantastic!!! Upper class, you jammy thing!

    I am getting absolutely nowhere with this restrained, polite C of E nonsense – I shall start praying to Jah immediately!!

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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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