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An expat Royal Wedding

30th April 2011 by Helena 2 Comments  

My day was totally dominated by the wedding yesterday. I woke up at 5am and counted the hours until it was due to begin. Then I started getting ready for the party, inbetween trips upstairs to watch every detail and every person arrive at the abbey. At around midday, we headed off to a garden party hosted by BP at the Hilton Hotel here. Of course it is already too hot to be in a garden here, so we were in an air-conditioned marquee, with a HUGE screen and lots of English food such as toad-in-the-hole and Pim’s to drink.

It was just heavenly. I don’t know why, but this sort of English feast makes me so very happy. I sat there, gazing at the screen, praying the rain would hold off in London and feeling thoroughly proud to be British – even though I’m not.

When they sang God Save the Queen we all stood up and I noticed many shed a tear. I wondered how many would rather have been back in Blightly for the big day than in the Middle East, pretending to be in Blighty. I guess that is the fate of the expat, always to be trying to recreate home, which I do endlessly by shopping at M & S, for example, and educating the children in the British system and reading the Daily Mail online several times a day.

“I want to live in England,” I wailed to Rupert when I got home after the balcony kiss. He had gone back for a kip some three hours earlier.

“No you don’t,” he said. “It’s a ghastly place. Have a cup of tea.”

I suppose the reality is that the England I am so in love with doesn’t exist any more, except for maybe in some parts of Chelsea or pockets of the countryside, all places I can’t afford to live in. So perhaps the best thing is to live here, and visit those places as often as possible.

But I would like to be there for the next royal wedding, however lovely the marquee on the lawn in Abu Dhabi was.

Copyright: Helena Frith Powell 2011


Filed Under: Abu Dhabi, Britain Tagged With: expat, royal, wedding

2 thoughts on An expat Royal Wedding

  • Katariina says:
    1st May 2011 at 2:01 pm

    Oh gawd, does anyone actually read Daily Mail these days? I thought it’s a paper for builders and their grandmas. And members of EDL. Rather surprised that someone as intelligent as you reads it daily…:(

  • Caroline says:
    5th May 2011 at 10:03 am

    How funny, we were in Singapore, and watched her walk up the aisle, but I was so pleased to miss the over the topness of it all! Mind you, have to confess to reading the DM whilst out there, which means much more enjoyable when you are not actually in the UK! Xx

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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. She writes a beauty blog www.beautyorbeast.uk.

Her third novel, The Arnolfini Marriage, based on a romance that evolves around a van Eyck masterpiece came out in 2016. As well as contributing regularly for newspapers and magazines, writing short stories and studying for a Masters in Creative Writing at the University of Cambridge, Helena is also working on a thriller called The Longest Night that will be published in spring 2019. Her latest non-fiction work Smart Women Don’t Get Wrinkles came out in hardback in 2016 and came out in paperback in April 2018.

Helena was educated at Durham University and lived in the Languedoc region of France for eight years, where the family still have a home. She lives between there and London 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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