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Mad dogs and Englishmen

16th July 2007 by Helena 2 Comments  

Leo

Summer is really here. I know this not just because it is extremely hot, but my house is full of children. In addition to the usual three I have my stepchildren Hugo and Julia here, along with Julia’s best friend Annabelle.

My three-year-old son has added a rather eccentric touch to his summer wardrobe. He insists on wearing knee-length skiing socks at all times. With his sandals. He looks like your original mad Englishman abroad but doesn’t seem to care. I have tried in vain to tell him he’ll be too hot and that he looks deranged. “I love them,” he tells me. “They’re so pretty.”

This morning my stepson Hugo started to teach him to play cricket. This is something I am all for. I don’t mind if he becomes a tennis champion or a cricket star as long as I can spend my retirement sitting in a sunny place gazing at him.

Of course he may have lost his ski-sock-wearing habit by then. They certainly won’t go with cricket whites. But at least for now I can improve on the Noel Coward quote. “Only mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the midday sun wearing ski socks.”

Adds a little something, don’t you think?

Copyright: Helena Frith Powell 2007


Filed Under: Children, Sport, blog --> Tagged With: englishmen

2 thoughts on Mad dogs and Englishmen

  • Kristi Belcamino says:
    17th July 2007 at 2:03 pm

    When my nephew was about the same age, his thing was cowboy boots. He wore them constantly, even to play on his little baseball team! Thankfully he eventually outgrew the obsession. It makes for a good story nowadays.

  • Amber Lee says:
    17th July 2007 at 9:05 pm

    I once said I would never watch baseball because it drug on so.
    My boyfriend’s favourite sport is cricket. Give him a national team and he’ll give you more stats then anyone cares to know.
    I know spend my freetime with him knitting him a cricket sweater while listening to the Kiwis…lose.

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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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