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Strawberry Hill Forever

30th April 2007 by Helena 1 Comment  

Strawberry HillTomorrow we leave Jamaica. As I write I am sitting at Strawberry Hill (another one of Kate Moss’s hang-outs, does the woman do anything but travel to Jamaica?). I am on a terrace overlooking mountains that are slowly being covered in evening mist. I have never seen such a lush landscape; the green is intense and the flowers bright yellow, pink, purple and red. My favourite ones were delicate small white ones that had blown off trees and floated in the sea at Goldeneye. It was like swimming surrounded by tiny origami swans.

From the valley below there is reggae music. Extremely loud reggae music. In France you have barking dogs wherever you go; in Jamaica you have Bob Marley. I was never really into Bob Marley, even as a young wild thing. In fact I was never really a young wild thing. As my husband pointed out when I told him I hated smoking pot as a teenager; “For someone who is so obsessed with ageing, you seem to have been middle aged for a very long time.” Perhaps I am going to go through adolescence when most women go through the menopause?

I think Jamaica is lovely but a little too groovy and laid-back for me. We met the manager of the hotel today who laughingly said “there’s no point in going 100 miles an hour, because everyone else is going at fifty”. She is over 40 and looks about 25 so obviously the stress-free attitude is a good one, but that would just really annoy me. How does anyone get anything DONE around here? Well, most of them don’t. Here is a classic example. One of the waitresses here told us her name today.

“That’s an unusual name,” said my husband, “what does it mean?”

“I don’t know,” said the waitress, who is probably in her mid-twenties. “I must find out.”

But even if I wouldn’t like to live here, I like it. The people are friendly, the rum punches good, the food delicious and the countryside stunning. Maybe by the time I’m 50 I’ll be groovy enough to really get into the swing of things.

Copyright: Helena Frith Powell 2007


Filed Under: Sea, Travel, blog --> Tagged With: forever, strawberry

One thought on Strawberry Hill Forever

  • Amber Lee says:
    30th April 2007 at 6:10 pm

    I am an anxiety wreck, really. Last year, I had to do an internship, and so I conveniently ran away to New Zealand. Their laid back attitude for almost a year forced me to slow down and made a world of difference to my mental health.

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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. 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 Welcome to Smullö that will be published in spring 2020.

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

 

 

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