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The latest must-have addiction

28th February 2007 by Helena 7 Comments  

I haven’t even left France and already I’ve been through a turbulent landing (lots of green faces, including mine) a bomb scare at Charles de Gaulle airport (possibly the most unpleasant place on earth apart from Abu Ghraib) and an hour and a half delay. Things can only get better.

To amuse myself I have been thinking about something I read in the paper this week. Apparently there is a new kind of addict; the e-mail addict. This is a person who cannot walk past a computer without checking his or her messages and if there aren’t enough of them will even resort to sending a few to himself. An e-mail addict cannot go for more than a few minutes without hitting the ‘send and receive’ button, it is as compulsive as breathing for them. There is even a woman in Pennsylvania offering e-mail addicts a twelve-step “detox” plan which includes first of all admitting that “your e-mail is managing you”.

What I find funny is the thought of these addicts pouncing on other people’s computers to feverishly see if anyone has bothered to send them anything. As I write there is a man in a white cotton shirt and black trousers (they probably wear innocuous clothes so as not to attract too much attention) next to me looking highly suspicious. I shall be holding on to my laptop tightly throughout the flight, assuming we ever get air-borne.

Nowadays it seems you can get addicted to anything; and of course it’s never your fault. Articles rave about the danger of women becoming addicted to plastic surgery and other treatments like Botox (now renamed something I can’t remember to separate it from its links with lethal toxins). Frankly if women are stupid enough not to know when to stop, that’s their own fault. There are lots of things available we shouldn’t do to excess, and it’s up to us to use some self-control.

But back to Ralph Fiennes and that encounter with the air hostess. Do you think he could possibly be a sex addict? I mean, she was OK, but of a certain age and by no means a looker. In fact I’d say she was actually quite plain and very common looking. About as far away from the elegant Francesca as you can get. I wonder whether his addiction didn’t get the better of him and he just couldn’t control himself. I just don’t understand why else he would have gone for her. Or maybe she had a Blackberry tucked up her skirt.

Copyright: Helena Frith Powell 2007


Filed Under: Life, blog --> Tagged With: addiction, latest

7 thoughts on The latest must-have addiction

  • Peggy says:
    28th February 2007 at 4:45 pm

    Bon voyage, Helena. America loves to look at the world through the lens of addiction, and Americans being prone to excess in all things, addiction is indeed the right paradigm.
    Must go now, get my morning fix of chocolate and coffee and check my emails…

  • spymum says:
    28th February 2007 at 8:04 pm

    Having read her interview in whatever tabloidy newspaper it was, am I alone in laughing hysterically at the part where she compliments him on ‘English Patient’ and he petulantly sulks that ‘that was ten years ago – why doesn’t anyone ever mention the new stuffI I do!’ LOL!!!

    Mind you, you can’t believe what you read in the papers!

  • Peggy says:
    28th February 2007 at 9:16 pm

    No Spymum, you are not alone. I have spent a rollicking morning reading the details of this rather dreary story (for which our heroine was paid big money, interview on sixty minutes and the whole shooting match). And how about when she calls him after her dismissal seeking help or solace and he basically says, sorry, can’t help you, don’t really know you very well and anyway, you didn’t like the job much anyway? And her father, who initially said the fellow flight attendants who complained were just jealous and probably unattractive cows…

  • Anna says:
    1st March 2007 at 10:02 am

    I haven’t read much about Ralph and the Air Hostess, but it seems like a pretty straightforward case of starf***ing and neither party deserves any sympathy. If the air hostess makes some money from selling her story to the tabloids, all well and good for her, though it’s an incredibly distasteful way to earn a living. And, Helena, I’m afraid I have a dimmer view of male sexual nature than you – I doubt very much R Fiennes is a sex addict, he was probably just very bored on the plane and jumped at the opportunity for a little strings-free diversion to pass the time…

  • mad muthas says:
    1st March 2007 at 2:09 pm

    oh bloody hell – i’m an email addict. i recognise every symptom. is there a 12 step recovery plan? can you email a link to me?

  • helena says:
    1st March 2007 at 2:23 pm

    There is no easy cure….but just google email addict and you’ll find the woman in the US.

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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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