I’m in the money

Posted on March 21, 2011 by Helena

Well, not really, but for the first time since I started this blog in November 2006 someone has paid to advertise on it. And I still have to set up the PayPal account to actually get the money, but I feel this is a bit of a breakthrough.

Rupes will be most impressed. he has been complaining that the books and the blog are a “luxury”, because they don’t really make any money. The other day he showed me a brilliant cartoon from the New Yorker with a man telling his agent he wants to write a book.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” says the agent. “If you really want $800 that badly, I’ll just give it to you.”

I think though that for books (and the blog) money is not really the point. I am already thinking about the next novel, in fact I have started it, and I am thinking about characters, plot-lines, themes, names and so on. The one thing I am not thinking about is money. Or lack of it.

I have also been given a bit of a helping hand with the new novel as my first love showed up in Abu Dhabi this week. Regular blog readers will know him as Heathcliff. I first met him when I was a teenager and was madly in love with him (unrequited, nach) for too many years. Obviously this theme has been done before, look at the hugely successful novel One Day, for example or Turgenev’s novella First Love. But as my father says: “There is nothing original since God said ‘let there be light’”. So watch this space.

Am looking for a good title if anyone has any ideas, just don’t expect to be paid….

Book Club Abu Dhabi style

Posted on March 13, 2011 by Helena

I flew back here yesterday and almost immediately had to go to a meeting of my book club, not the one I created, but one I was asked to join just a week ago.

The book under discussion was We need to talk about Kevin by Lionel Shriver. This is a book that had sold over one million copies, been translated into just about every language you’ve ever heard of and is about to become a film starring Tilda Swinton.

There were two key differences between this meeting and most other book club meetings; one it was at a palace and two, the author was there. Lionel Shriver herself showed up and talked to us about her life, her books, the writing process and much more for over an hour. Amazing.

She seemed really nice; very expressive and fun, and clever (as you would expect). I was longing to ask her all kinds of detailed questions about writing, plotting, character and so forth. I remember being in such awe when I read ‘Kevin’ and thinking I will never be able to write a book like that. She did say she had the whole plot worked out before she began. I was still deciding the ending of my book when I wrote it.

London was great; I was on TV (The Vanessa Show, March 11th, if anyone can be bothered to do so, please upload it to Youtube so my poor deprived children can watch it, we can’t access it from here), lots of radio shows and today there was a gossip piece in the Independent on Sunday today. The book had sold out at Waterstone’s on the King’s Road the second day I was there which was very exciting. We will know latest sales figures tomorrow.

It was great to see everyone and London was sunny – which is probably even more unusual than a best-selling author showing up at your book club.

A great weekend

Posted on January 2, 2011 by Helena

There are times when pictures speak louder than words…..

But let me tell you about it anyway. WHAT a weekend. Three days of tennis and a drinks party with Rafa and Federer as guests of honour (along with Soderling, Tsonga, Berdych and Baghdatis). I met them all. Rafa even put his arm around me. And just when I thought things couldn’t get any better, he took his top off. Not at the party. On a practice court where he was hurling serves at his coach. I was standing about three metres away from him. I’m not sure I have fully recovered.

Rupes got to play in a clinic with Federer whom he says was charm personified and I played in one with Berdych, who was great. Leo and I went to every single match and we cheered for Soderling (being proper Swedes). We were in a minority and every now and again one could hear “Heja Soderling” ring out from the little man across the stadium. I was very proud of him.

Oh, and for one of the Rafa matches Leo and I were in the royal box. Actually in the front row of the royal box. I thought at the time, “this is as good as it gets”. The only downside was that when he took his top off he was shielded from our view by the umpire’s chair. But who am I to grumble…..?

A young sporting hero

Posted on December 13, 2010 by Helena

In an ideal world, it would be the temperature it is now in Abu Dhabi all year round. As most of Europe freezes under a hideous cold spell, we spend our time outside playing tennis, walking, even doing yoga on the beach.

For the children, especially little Leo, it is a dream. Another day, another sporting activity.

Last weekend we headed off to Al Ain, a town about an hour east of Abu Dhabi, for a rugby tournament and Leo, team captain, proudly carried the cup. Here he is with the other young Harlequins.

This is a great place for a future sporting legend to grow up. Every break at school they play outside. Every afternoon in our compound Leo plays catch, rugby and football with the other kids. Several times a week we head to the tennis courts. On Fridays he and Rupert head to the golf course.

Since we realised Leo is left-handed I harboured a not-so-secret desire for him to become a professional tennis player. I imagined him winning Wimbledon and clambering up to hug me a la Borg. I envisioned myself following him around the world to various sunny spots, proudly watching as he picks up another trophy.

But I fear it is not to be. If he is going to excel in any sport, it is football. His coach told us at training last week that he thinks he is good enough to be a possible for the Qatar World Cup in 2022. Oh well, at least he will be used to the conditions…..

The Lovely Lewis

Posted on November 11, 2010 by Helena

I thought very hard about whether to write this blog before or after I meet Lewis Hamilton at the Abu DHabi Grand Prix this weekend.

Logically it might be better to write it after, but I often think the anticipation of something is almost better than the event itself.

In the magazine we always put a piece pegged to something in before the event, so I am just following that pattern.

My outfit is ready, (flat shoe requirement is rather a bummer), I am sitting here with a face-pack on, nails immaculate, hair about to be washed. At midday I head off to the VIP paddock where I assume hundreds of glam types will be milling around.

I am not only taking my notebook, business cards and newly-washed hair but a rather large spot, right by my nose. It was so nice of it to show up just in time for Lewis, in Ferrari red.

Wish me luck, and if Lewis turns out to be totally amazing, I’ll just write about him again after the event.

A moving experience

Posted on October 25, 2010 by Helena

Last time we moved, and I mean really moved, as opposed to leaving Sainte Cecile with a car full of belongings, I was eight months’ pregnant. Rupert had already gone on ahead to France to “prepare” the new house and I was left with Olivia to pack up our entire home.
Olivia, as you might imagine, was not much use. Aged just over one, her overriding interest was in getting in and out of the boxes I was trying to fill. It is a time of my life I prefer to forget, along with my night in Stoke Newington jail and being pick-pocketed at Victoria coach station (unrelated but unpleasant events).
Two weeks ago we moved house here in Abu Dhabi. At 9am on Friday morning (the day of the move) a team of seven men showed up to pack all our belongings. By 10pm on Saturday most of them were unpacked and in more or less the right place. I spent most of the time telling the removal men where to put things and meeting the neighbours.
Of course it was not totally stress-free; I lost my hairbrush, for example. Quelle horreur. But I didn’t unpack a single kitchen appliance, or even a glass wrapped in newspaper, which has to be a good thing.

The new house is lovely, a proper family villa, with a rent that, though astronomical, is low enough that we can live without lodgers. The house is in a small compound of ten villas, with a cobbled road up the middle, where the kids play endlessly. The other families have children too, some of whom mine have met before, so it has all worked out perfectly. Well, apart from one incident where Leo cycled straight out of the compound onto the main road without looking and could have been crushed by oncoming traffic. Thankfully he wasn’t, and there really isn’t much oncoming traffic, but he has been banned from the bike for a week.
I am not saying I want to move on a regular basis, but I am happy we did and that I have discovered that, when done properly, moving doesn’t have to be, as the saying goes, one of the three most stressful things in life, along with death and divorce.

What a difference four weeks makes….

Posted on October 9, 2010 by Helena

Olivia was away for most of the summer, staying with my mother in Italy. But when she came home, apart from speaking some Italian, there was no discernible difference. After four weeks of boarding school she has become a teenager.

This may sound bad, it is not. She is still my little Olive, but she does things like talk about boys (one of her classmates apparently asked her out, “where do you go on a date aged 11?” I demanded to know. “I dunno,” she replied. “I said no.”), make-up, Louis Vuitton handbags (all her Russian friends have real ones) and she wanders around with an ear-plug in one ear listening to strange music.

“Our little Olive has grown into a big Olive,” Bea said with some nostalgia when I remarked on how changed she is.

She also does things like lock her bedroom door and sleep until 10am. She came home this weekend with her best friend from school, so I really didn’t see much of her at all. But I did feel, at one stage this afternoon, when all three babes (and Abbie) were at home that all was as it should be.

Next week there is more change. We leave our home of two years for a new house. Prices have finally come down so we are moving to somewhere cheaper, closer to the office and with a pool. It is not our pool, but in a compound of ten villas I don’t think it can ever get too busy.

I am excited about moving, about getting to know a new area and seeing the kids swimming and scootering up and down the little cobbled road that runs through the compound. Moving in Abu Dhabi is slightly different to moving anywhere in Europe. We all pack a suitcase of essentials and then the movers do the rest. Including the unpacking. To me that seems on a level with undertakers of nasty jobs. I hate even unpacking a picnic.

Have a good week.

Popping to Oman for the weekend

Posted on June 20, 2010 by Helena

One of the advantages of living here is that you can pop to Oman for the weekend, which is what we did last week.

We drove from Abu Dhabi over the border to the Musandam Peninsula and the exclusive, gorgeous Zighy Bay resort.

Arriving there from the city through a mountain track populated by goats was extremely exciting and romantic. The resort itself has a feel to it a little like a small Spanish village from another era, with sandy tracks the children cycled up and down and wooden huts.

Listening to the sea was glorious, the waves crashing against the beach and hundreds of little crabs scuttling around like over-sized demented spiders.

It was so lovely to see the children outside, cycling around, playing and swimming. They had three friends there and the six of them roamed around in a pack, in total safety, and ordered room service endlessly (eating for kids under the age of 12 was free).

There was a classic line from Bea when she told me off for being caught topless by her young friends; “Mummy, you only have one life and there is no point in spending it naked”.

The four of adults played tennis (once we got Leo and Max, the new Rafa and Federer off the court), read books and watched the England game which was undoubtedly the low-light of the weekend.

Having said that possibly the only thing that was more painful and irritating than witnessing England’s sad performance was watching my husband flirting with a Brazilian woman sitting next to us. What is it about Brazilian women that sends men mad? You just have to mention the word Brazilian and they start salivating and behaving like fools.

As there were no men for me to flirt with I went to bed at half-time hoping that by the time I woke up England would have scored. They hadn’t, but neither had my husband, so I suppose I should be grateful for small mercies.

A novel way to look at washing up

Posted on May 14, 2010 by Helena

I have just spent four hours in my kitchen, washing up, murdering cockroaches, preparing dinner (Sobu noodles with vegetables along with baked salmon which is marinading as I write) and baking a cake. Unlike a lot of houses here in Abu Dhabi, ours has a rather lovely, large kitchen. The reason most of them don’t is that the builders or rather the architects assumed no one of any significance was ever going to go into the kitchen. Appalling but true.

Every day bar Friday, my kitchen belongs to our lovely housemaid Schamanee. Her first question every morning is ‘what for the lunch, Madam?’ Her second question is ‘what for the dinner?’ Similarly every day except Fridays my gorgeous Volvo belongs to our driver Mohamed Ali. I rarely see it, as it used to ferry the children around and I am always in the office.

The last couple of Fridays I have begun to notice what a treat it is to be in control of my kitchen and my car. I drive to the supermarket listening to the World Service or Mika. Then I come home and put all my shopping away and start preparing lunch. The children sometimes come and chat to me, or shout at me, Rupert sits and reads the newspaper on the sofa.

Today a friend was over and we talked non-stop while I polished surfaces, chopped up vegetables and boiled noodles. It felt so good to be cooking again, almost to the point of being creative. And baking a cake made me feel like the perfect wife and mother, for at least 10 seconds. I pottered about in my Kath Kidston apron brandishing a J-cloth feeling remarkably zen and at peace with the world, apart from when I saw a cockroach that is, and I turned into a Jiff-murderer.

I know that for most people kitchen chores are just that, but I just want to put on record what a joy a task that involves no brain-power, is edible and leaves you with clean surfaces can be.

Obviously I have now had to take to my bed from exhaustion, but thankfully dinner is ready and tomorrow I go back to my normal routine…..Have a lovely weekend.

City of Life

Posted on May 1, 2010 by Helena

Last night I went to see the first full-length film made here in the UAE; it is called City of Life, is set in Dubai and was directed by a young (and not unattractive) man called Ali Mostafa (pictured below). I ran into him at an even earlier this year and was thrilled to find we have so much in common. For example, we’re both in the Ahlan Hot 100. Yes, one of the few advantages of being in the Ahlan Hot 100 is that you get to bother fellow hotties.

Anyway, the film is OK, really very good in parts. Although some of the dialogue is so trite it makes you squirm in your seat and the acting (especially by one of the female leads) reminded me of myself in the only play I was ever in at Durham where the critic wrote about my “purely decorative role”. At the time I was so stupid I took that as a compliment. Actually this particular ‘actress’ wasn’t even pretty enough to warrant that damning praise.

The three main characters are a rich Emirati, an East European air stewardess and an Indian taxi driver who dreams of being a Bollywoood star. Of all of them he is by far the most sympathetic and believable; I longed for him to make it. Funnily enough I thought it was the rich Emirati who was the one with least hope, despite his money and red Ferrari.

It was really interesting to see life here on the big screen and I hope there will be many more films as a result of this pioneering one. Although my friend Justine may disagree, she left halfway through. I obviously stayed on just in case the director pitched up….