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Zermatt Torture

11th April 2007 by Helena 3 Comments  

ZermattWe are in Zermatt on a skiing holiday with the children organised by a company called Powder Byrne. The concept is brilliant. They take your children away to places with lots of other children and people like a very nice man called Ed who like looking after children from 8.30 to 4pm so you can ski, sit in the sun, drink hot chocolate or do whatever you like doing up mountains. Then they organise a dinner for them every day at 6pm so you can have an hour in the bar.

This is all well and good, but what I want to know is this: Is there a company that looks after them at night? If not, can I just say that this is a business opportunity waiting to happen and I will be your very first and most loyal customer.

Our night went something like this after a nine-hour train journey from Montpellier to Zermatt.

9.30 pm (by which time I was fast asleep on account of Leonardo keeping me up all night the night before). “Mummy, daddy, Leo won’t go to sleep, he keeps annoying us.”

We get them into bed again, take my laptop into their room and try to calm them down with ABBA. This works for a few hours.

Midnight “Mummy, daddy, we can’t sleep.”

Off I go again, now I try Jack Johnson and swearing.

3am “Mummy, it’s already morning time in France. We’re ready.” The three of them are up and fully dressed. Great.

I explain (rather patiently I might add, considering) that when the sun is not up, it is not morning, here or in France.

They get back into their pyjamas and go back to bed reluctantly.

6am “Mummy, my bed isn’t tidy up.” This time it’s Leo, alone.

“Like I care,” I’m tempted to respond. Instead I tell him to go back to his untidy bed, which of course he refuses to do until I go with him and make his bed for him.

Olivia groans from her bed but luckily the girls sleep through the untidy bed episode.
7am we have to wake them all up to get them ready for ski-school.

It is now 7pm and I approach the night rather like a torture victim approaches his torture chamber. I suppose the only upside is, it can’t get any worse.

Copyright: Helena Frith Powell 2007


Filed Under: Children, Family, France, Life, Parental truths, Travel, blog --> Tagged With: torture, zermatt

3 thoughts on Zermatt Torture

  • spymum says:
    12th April 2007 at 7:38 am

    Alpine, skiing holiday night care! I think you’re on to something there – this could be the money-spinning idea that has for so long eluded me!

  • Yann says:
    13th May 2007 at 8:01 pm

    I’m outraged at this article.
    What’s the point of taking your children with you on holiday if you really feel that way about them? Because you still want to be considered as a caring parent?

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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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