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The Christmas Party

12th December 2006 by Helena Leave a Comment  

My son, LeoIt’s that time of year again. Most of my friends are wandering around in a haze of alcohol; either drunk or horribly hungover. Me, I am polishing my halo as I turn down a second Christmas party this season to stay at home and watch my son (pictured here) make his stage debut. I was due to head to London next week for the Daily Mail party but have decided not to go. Leonardo’s school play may not be as entertaining as some of performances seasoned Mail hacks come up with but it’s just one of those things I can’t miss.

Also, Christmas parties are notoriously dangerous. I remember my mother years ago giving me the only piece of career advice she ever gave me. “Never get drunk at the office Christmas party,” she told me. Of course I totally ignored her. I have often woken up the morning after an office party, drifted between semi-consciousness and consciousness, realised why I feel like I’ve been hit over the head repeatedly with a cricket bat and then sat up in bed and wailed “NO, please, please, please someone tell me I didn’t do an impression of a lap-dancer on heat/insist on photocopying my cleavage /tell the boss how to run his shitty little company, resign and then try to snog him.”

We’ve all been there. The Christmas office party, it’s an institution, rather like fish & chips or the cup final. It’s the one time during the whole year we’re allowed to behave appallingly badly and all is forgiven. A policy of shaded windows applies; what goes on at the party is not allowed to be revealed outside the office and no on is held accountable for any misdemeanours. Suddenly everyone from the chief exec to the lowliest secretary is only as strong as their resistance to alcohol and most of them revert to teenage behaviour almost immediately. Forget I’m a Celebrity Get me Out of Here. Why not just film a few Christmas parties; where the rules of the jungle really apply?

Unlike my mother I won’t advise you to stay sober; it’s just not an option. But one tip I learnt from a French woman now living in London is to start the evening drinking water. That way by the time you get drunk, everyone else will be so far gone there’s no way they will remember you trying to nick their boyfriend, job or, most appalingly, their Jimmy Choo suede slingbacks.


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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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