helena frith powell

  • Lifestyle
  • Women
  • Beauty
  • France
  • Contact

Leo’s first love

22nd April 2007 by Helena Leave a Comment  

I am at the airport on the first leg of my Jamaica trip. There is a mad woman next to me muttering to herself about her passport and where she might have put it. What is it about travelling that turns people into lunatics? For all I know she might be perfectly normal in her home surroundings, but right now I’m tempted to call in the men in white coats.

Water babyYesterday little Leo had a big day. In the morning he had school, once home we played in the garden, then he was forced to play mummy and baby with Bea. Bea is a far stricter mother than I am, so Leo was subjected to severe tellings off and not allowed to breathe without permission. He also had to carry Bea’s other “baby” around for most of the afternoon until Bea decided it should learn to swim and dumped it in the pool.

LeoWe baked a chocolate cake and took it to the river to eat it. Leo’s girlfriend Astrid showed up and so Bea lost her baby. Astrid and Leo are so sweet together, padding about, holding hands and whenever she can she steals a kiss. We spent the rest of the day by the pool where Leo did belly flops (rather sweetly called Angel jumps in French) from the little pool to the big pool to impress Astrid.

SpideyAt 8pm he was exhausted. He collapsed into bed, weeping with tiredness.

“What’s wrong?” I asked him.

“Oh Spiderman,” he wailed, tears pouring down his face. “I love you so much.”

There’s no accounting for taste.

Copyright: Helena Frith Powell 2007


Filed Under: Children, Travel, blog --> Tagged With: first

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Your email address will not be published.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 The Longest Night that will be published in spring 2019. 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: 17SiteTitle - 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: 17SiteTitle - 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 */ /* ----------------------------------------- */