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Tomorrow, tomorrow….

14th February 2009 by Helena 3 Comments  

When I was little I wanted to be an actress. “You don’t want to do that,” my mother said. “It’s just a lot of waiting around.” Yesterday I saw just how much waiting around is involved.

I took the girls to audition for the musical Annie in Dubai. We got there at 10am sharp as we’d been told to do and joined a queue. Two hours later we were still in said queue. Then we were finally allocated numbers and told we had another two hours to wait. Maybe that’s why the most famous song in the show is called ‘Tomorrow’.

annie_the_musical-1-200-200-85-nocrop327170851.gif

“We quit,” said the girls, ripping off their sticky numbers. I am normally quite a determined type, but four hours of waiting to be told they haven’t got the lead part seemed a little excessive, even for an ambitious mother like me.
So we headed to a party on the beach. Much more fun. We danced and ate and drank and ran up and down the beach carrying pink balloons. The girls looked lovely in their Monsoon sale kit. One advantage of the credit crunch is that 70 per cent off is the new black.

As I gazed at the moon while listening to 80s pop music and sipping champagne, I reflected that Noel Coward was right. “Don’t put your daughter on the stage, Mrs Worthington,” he said. Sound advice. Which my mother followed and I am beginning to see the wisdom of.

Of course this does not apply to ballet. On Wednesday the girls will be performing their “Arabic dance” at a theatre in Abu Dhabi. I am hoping the only queuing will be from the eager public…..

Copyright: Helena Frith Powell 2009


Filed Under: Abu Dhabi, Ballet, Children, blog --> Tagged With: tomorrow

3 thoughts on Tomorrow, tomorrow....

  • snusmormor says:
    16th February 2009 at 11:16 am

    Noel Coward and mothers are always right!

  • Paula says:
    19th February 2009 at 3:58 am

    You are still making memories for the girls. My sister’s and I stood in line to audition for Annie in egads! the late 70’s. It was the only time in my life that I was deemed to be too tall. We still laugh about it as I look up to my younger sisters. I mostly remember the waiting…

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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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