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2nd May 2007 by Helena 2 Comments  

Here’s what I like about being home:

Pow!Seeing the children

Bea singing along to Mika as she falls asleep

Olivia telling me she’s going to vote for Segolene Royal “because she’s a girl, do you want me to vote for a boy?”

Telling Leo we can’t buy Batman sweets because if you eat rubbish like that you end up spotty and fat and him saying “ssshhhh. Batman’s in the sky, he can hear you”.

Covering the children with millions of kisses and hugs. I think they’re longing for me to go away again

Lucy enters the wardrobeReading The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe to the children and remembering how excited I felt the first time I read about Lucy going through the wardrobe

Driving on a straight road without other cars meeting me head-on

Hugging the children

Sleeping in my own bed

Not being woken up by the cockrel.

What I don’t like about being home:

The pile of laundry soon to be turned into a pile of ironing

The pile of post (apart from a parcel from Aromatherapy Associates with lovely-smelling goodies)

Not being able to write all day without any admin/washing up/shopping/cooking/other work/plumbers to find/children to encourage not to fight/school runs and so on

The cold weather

The fact that my swallows have left the garage as the house-sitter shut the door without realising they were there

The lack of staff. In fact now I am the staff. Bummer.

Copyright: Helena Frith Powell 2007


Filed Under: Children, Travel, blog -->

2 thoughts on Home

  • Rupert says:
    2nd May 2007 at 5:45 pm

    I think you mean ‘cockerel’. Word reaches me that the bird in question is now a drumstick. Jerked, no doubt.

  • Claire says:
    8th May 2007 at 11:20 pm

    I too am evaluating home as a concept. That children and husband are involved is a given but also given is that we are caught in a location, location dilemna. Very happy with our winter, term time base but also with our Herault, head space place.

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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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