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Life in a foreign land

23rd March 2009 by Helena 2 Comments  

It is easy to forget as you sit sipping your Starbucks in a shopping mall surrounded by shops you have shopped in for years that you are living in the Middle East. But sometimes there are reminders. The other day for example, we saw a camel in the back of a pick-up truck. You don’t get many of those in Chelsea.

Yesterday there was a sand-storm. You feel like you’re in Star Wars as the sand flies around you and I was half expecting to see some of those evil little sand people. Actually you can’t really see anything, it’s quite amazing. Rather like a really bad snow-storm. And rather like snow, the sand leaves a layer on cars and lamp posts.

sand_people.jpg

The other thing that has struck me recently is that everyone keeps saying how “unseasonably hot” it is. That’s a phrase you had to be alive during the heatwave of 1976 to hear in England. Not that I was, of course….

Yesterday was Mother’s Day and the girls sang me a Mother’s Day song in Arabic. I remember when I used to find them singing in French exotic. Now that seems almost mundane. Although slightly more comprehensible than Arabic. But only slightly.

Copyright: Helena Frith Powell 2009


Filed Under: Abu Dhabi, Travel, blog --> Tagged With: foreign

2 thoughts on Life in a foreign land

  • Norrie says:
    24th March 2009 at 9:53 am

    Not exactly ‘unseasonably hot’ here but we do have something that Abu Dhabi lacks – Spring.
    Here the primroses on the banks, in the fields and under the hedgerows are more numerous than stars in our clear Alpine skies. The steep climb up to the church is made worthwhile by the clumps of violets vibrant in the sunlight and, to top it all, yesterday in the woods above one of our fields, I heard the cuckoo. We’d love to share it all but you are miles away so we share in spirit, N & M.

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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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