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Parental truths number One

14th February 2007 by Helena 4 Comments  

Why so many?This is a new series, and I’m sorry if I’m boring those of you without children but one day you may have them or you will at least know someone who does have them and so you can warn them. If you don’t I’m sure the same applies to pets.

The other day in Montpellier I took the children to the merry-go-round. It was closed.

“It’s your fault,” wailed Leo after I refused to let him break through the barrier and get on. We walked on towards the park where I hoped to distract them by feeding the ducks. They were in a terrible mood due to the closed merry-go-round and started fighting each other in the street.

“Stop,” I yelled, secretly praying some stranger would take pity on me and take them away from me.

“Well,” said Bea, looking her most belligerent, “it’s your fault for having so many children. Why did you have to have three of us?”

Later at home Olivia knocked her drink all over the table. “Mummy,” she yelled at me. “Now look!” I was, at the time, at least ten metres away from her by the sink, lovingly washing up after their dinner (what a martyr) but the spilled drink was of course ALL MY FAULT.

So there you have it. The English poet Charles Churchill once said of the actor Thomas Sheridan: “Where he falls short, ’tis Nature’s fault alone; Where he succeeds, the merit’s all his own.”

Substitute the word nature for the word mother and you have parental truth number one.

Copyright: Helena Frith Powell 2007


Filed Under: Children, Family, Life, Women, blog --> Tagged With: number, parental, truths

4 thoughts on Parental truths number One

  • spymum says:
    14th February 2007 at 8:55 pm

    How true! 🙁 But they do love us!

  • Amber Lee says:
    15th February 2007 at 2:59 am

    I am the oldest of four and I am fairly sure I told my mother that if she had only had fewer children, our problems would be less!

    :X

  • snusmormor says:
    15th February 2007 at 9:28 pm

    Could it be a result of watching Desperate Housewives, I wonder?

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    28th March 2010 at 5:01 pm

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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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