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The greatest living Englishman on the football pitch?

2nd June 2007 by Helena 1 Comment  

I don’t know why I watched the football last night. Well, actually I do, it was because Beckham and Owen were playing and so it felt like the good old days when I used to enjoy football and England weren’t appallingly bad.

You’ve got to hand it to Becks. All that pressure and what does he do? Just puts the ball where you expect him to. I don’t know how he lives with all the negative publicity and nasty things said about him. I was upset by a couple of losers writing mean things on their blogs about me. He has to look at his life (and even worse, his hairstyle) being torn to bits in the national press on a daily basis.

I wonder how he felt the moment before he kicked the ball to Terry? We all know that if he messed up the critics would have been thrilled to tear him to bits. I was so nervous for him. But he seemed cool as anything. It reminded me of the Kipling poem, which I know is a cliche but I still love it:

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you
But make allowance for their doubting too,
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise

Meanwhile it is official, I am a lunatic. “Mummy you’re quite the maddest girl I know,” Olivia told me this morning. So that’s reassuring. I’m now going to iron my straight-jacket and watch the football highlights.

Copyright: Helena Frith Powell 2007


Filed Under: Sport, blog --> Tagged With: englishman, football, greatest, living, pitch

One thought on The greatest living Englishman on the football pitch?

  • Norrie says:
    5th June 2007 at 8:06 am

    Wasn’t it Constable who said of Turner,”Any man who distinguishes himself stands upon a precipice” This surely applies to women too. Don’t worry about hurtful blogs Helena, they merley signal failure or jealosy on the part of the blogger

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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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