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The case of the barking parrot

21st March 2013 by Helena Leave a Comment  

One of the things I hate about France is barking dogs. It seems that wherever you go, even somewhere as isolated as Sainte Cecile, you will hear some poor dog yapping in the distance. If you live in a village, you will probably hear a cacophony of dogs, desperate to be untied, fed, walked or whatever it is they are barking about.
Rupert hates barking dogs even more than I do and has always said that one of the great things about living in the Middle East is the lack of them. The Arabs have a strange relationship with dogs. Mostly they don’t seem to like them, so they are a rarity.
Then a few weeks ago, the unthinkable happened. We were lying in bed one weekend and we heard a sound that catapulted is all the way back to the south of France. Yap, yap yap, yap, yap, yap yap yap.
“I don’t believe it,” said Rupes, leaping out of bed. “Where the hell is that coming from?”
We couldn’t quite work it out, but on and on the dog barked, not all day, but a few hours a day, enough to be irritating. Rupes kept shaking his head and cursing.
A few days ago we went for a walk behind our compound and there was the yapping, louder and clearer. We walked into a courtyard and sure enough, a lovely little collie was tied up, jumping around trying to release itself, barking like crazy.
We stood around for a few minutes and the dog seemed to calm down a little. Eventually an elegant man dressed in a dishdash walked out of the house. He greeted us like long-lost friends. We rather sheepishly (ha ha) explained why we were there.
“Oh,” he said raising his arms up to the heavens. “That’s not the dog barking. It’s the parrot.”
“The parrot?”
‘Yes, indeed, follow me.”
He led us into his kitchen where a large green parrot was sitting on a perch in a cage.
“He copies everything you say and he copies the dog. It’s the parrot barking, not the dog.”
We looked at the parrot and the parrot looked at us. “Chelsea is the best team in the world,” I said in an effort to teach it something useful. No sound. Rupert poked his finger at it, which it tried to bite off.
“You must come to my new Majlis,” said our host, ushering us out. “And I’m sorry for the parrot.”
We walked home, reflecting on what a strange and wonderful place we have ended up in. And behind us in the distance was the unmistakeable sound of a parrot, barking.

Copyright: Helena Frith Powell 2013


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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. Helena is also working on a thriller called Thin Ice that will be published in spring 2021 as well as a novel about the relationship between Virginia Woolf and Katherine Mansfield called Sense of an Echo.

Her latest non-fiction work Smart Women Don’t Get Wrinkles came out in hardback in 2016 and in paperback in April 2018.

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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