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Landscape, what landscape?

4th June 2013 by Helena 2 Comments  

I am getting old. The reason I know this is not the wrinkles or the aches and pains, but that I have discovered landscape.
Landscape was a word that used to make me switch off as soon as I heard it. I found people droning on about land (yawn) scape was about as interesting as my cleaning lady detailing the benefits of one type of bleach over another. My husband and his great friend Simon used to talk about it endlessly. They even wrote a book about it, which I did manage to read but only because it was about wine as well.
Now I am a convert. I finally get it. And I can’t believe how blind I have been.
This has not been a gradual process. I arrived in France ten days ago and on a walk to the top of a hill to look at the house I suddenly realised that this place is ASTOUNDINGLY beautiful. Now I just can’t stop appreciating it. I have become a landscape bore. A born again landscape follower. Everywhere I go I gaze at the colours, the contours and the contrasts nature has created. I just can’t believe it has always been there and I’ve never really LOOKED at it. I suppose when we lived here it was just home and that was the way it was. It probably also helps that I have spent the last five years in a place where the landscape consists of sand, more sand and oh there’s some sand.
Whatever it is I am thrilled to be a landscape lover, even if it has only come at a certain age.

Copyright: Helena Frith Powell 2013


Filed Under: France, Languedoc, Life, blog --> Tagged With: landscape

2 thoughts on Landscape, what landscape?

  • Noch says:
    5th June 2013 at 11:37 am

    Do you now consider the history? I often look and think: what army went there, which peasant skived here and how many bawdry, lazy girls have had an afternoon’s fun before me.

  • Helena says:
    5th June 2013 at 11:55 am

    Now I’m going to be even more obsessed! I did once, while running up a hill, imagine that Rafa Nadal was behind a bush at the top of it. Does that count? x

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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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