Helena Frith Powell

So my Zeldafication begins in earnest on Tuesday when I go to an advanced adult ballet class with our lovely new lodger Una, who was at ballet school until she was 14. Yes I know that I am not advanced, but did that ever stop Zelda? So wish me luck.

Meanwhile if you have a moment please sign this petition to save a library in Montpellier. I had this email from a friend yesterday and said I would do all I can to help: ‘The Anglophone Library (formerly called American Library) here was abruptly closed by the university Paul Valery in January. A group of us are trying to save the books( 30,000) as the university was planning on putting them in boxes and storing them. We are hoping that a new venue will be found for them and have a lot of backing, including that of George Frèche, but we’ve been advised to build as big a support base as possible. One of the things we’ve done is to put a petition online and if we get signatures of stars that gives us even more credibility. Now I know there was at least one of your books in the library, because I read it, so your name would be very significant. If you feel the cause is good, here’s the link :

www.ipetitions.com/petition/savethelibrarymontpellier’

Dancing and reading are the two things we Zeldas most appreciate…..

Copyright: Helena Frith Powell 2010

The girls are totally and utterly obsessed with some game on the internet where you have a flat and pets and move your furniture around and go to sleep. My question is this: why not just play in a real room as opposed to a virtual one? Maybe it is because in a virtual world they are in total control?

Or they could even go outside. The weather is lovely at the moment. There is a cool breeze and warming sun, it is hard to imagine how hot and unpleasant it gets, right now it feels like paradise.

The novel is progressing. Not the writing, obviously, that comes last. But there is already interest from the US publisher of Two Lipsticks and a Lover, heaven knows how they heard about it. And Martin my publisher and I are back to our old habits of emailing each other at strange times of the night with “brainwaves”. When Rupert found me on my BlackBerry at 6am this morning responding to an email Martin sent in the middle of the night he quickly decided to go and play golf. “I can’t believe you two are back together,” he sighed.

Martin’s publishing assistant had come up with another title: Sex and the Chateau. I am not mad about it, but do see the need to make the title a little more intriguing and sexy than Lost in France. I came up with Three Lovers and a Vineyard, but we’re open to ideas….Meanwhile I need to get back to writing, or it will be a virtual book.

Copyright: Helena Frith Powell 2009

Hello all and THANK YOU for such encouraging words from my lovely blog-readers. I just received this from my favourite publisher, Martin Rynja at Gibson Square…

“Hi Helena, you spake too soon on blog. I have been reading your novel (and so has Debora who helps me with some editorial stuff) and we both love it (though I have not been able to finish it to the end yet, as I am a slow reader) and I would love to publish it.”

So we’re off! Yippeeee! And tomorrow I interview Rafael Nadal, what joy. How could 2009 possibly get any better?

Copyright: Helena Frith Powell 2009 (for one last time)

For me it began with my birthday party – fabulous fun – and ended this morning when my in-laws went back home. Christmas Day was great; lunch around 4pm by which time Noch (see self-portrait below) and I had danced to most of the 80s hits on her i-pod.

This evening our great friends Jean-Claude and Alexandra arrive from France with their daughter Elisa, Olivia’s best friend, and Astrid, Leo’s girlfriend (although he denies it). We will have lots to do including the Capitala Tennis tournament (Rafa and Federer playing), a trip to the desert and a party to see in the New Year. If it is anything like my birthday, it will be a memorable end to the year. In any case I can’t wait to see them, although I worry I won’t be able to speak French any more.

Last night Rupert and I tried to think of the highlights of 2009. Very tricky. Especially after a long Christmas and not much sleep and a lot of wine, but we came up with…..

Olivia winning the two-hole championship and setting a club record

Bea winning the raffle to play with Rafa and Federer

Leonardo getting engaged but not knowing his fiancee’s name

The Savoie this summer (especially watching Wuthering Heights at Norrie and Mary’s and dinner at Mrs Wasta’s with the “talking bush”.)

Our trip to Rome (and especially making friends with my aunt again and watching the children discover ancient Rome, as well as seeing my parents who are thankfully just the same as always).

Interviewing Prince Andrew

and lots more, but the silly thing is one can never remember.

So what are my hopes for 2010? I hope I will get to do lots more interesting interviews and that the job will continue to be fun. I also hope that at some stage I will be able to do a full forward bend. I hope that the children will start to be a little easier to manage and not quite so demanding/difficult; mostly the girls, Leo is pretty easy to deal with most of the time and a joy for much of it.

And I hope inspiration hits me for a book because right now, despite encouraging comments from lovely readers like the one from Nina on the previous blog, I am not really sure what to do next. The novel does not look like it’s a goer and non-fiction is tricky with a full-time job. Added to which, you don’t really make any money from books. So maybe it’s time to stop and do something else? Seems strange to give up on the one thing I always wanted to do, but as Rupes says, at least I did it.

Copyright: Helena Frith Powell 200

Someone I interviewed once said that the greatest gift you can give your children is a love of reading. I am happy to say that after years of reading to them, encouraging them to read (by paying them 50 pence for every book they finished) and leading by example, they have finally got it.

Last night Bea dived into bed with a great grin on her face clutching a book in French about a princess who wants to be a witch. I recognised that feeling of anticipation and happiness at the thought of time alone with a book. I have it, most recently with a PG Wodehouse book I just finished. They should prescribe PG Wodehouse for depression, better than any pills.

Olivia was reading Ferdinand to Leonardo which was another sight to fill a book-mad mother with joy. This is a book that both Rupert and I loved as children, I even remember it in Swedish.

Meanwhile the house burglary saga goes on…turns out the stereo is missing and lots of DVDs and the TV in the kitchen too.

I just hope they haven’t taken any of our books….at least we had the foresight to bring Ferdinand with us.

Copyright: Helena Frith Powell 2009

A few evenings ago I went out and left Rupert in charge of the children. The next morning when I got up I found Bea on the sofa reading Proust. In French.
“What’s going on?” I asked him.  He told me he had read them the beginning of A la Recherche du Temps Perdu as a bedtime story the night before. He got out of bed (unusual before his cup of tea) to come and look at Bea.

“Are you enjoying the book?” he asked her.

“I am,” she replied. “But it’s not like a book, more like poetry.”

I think we have a literary critic in the making. And now I can bore people at dinner parties for years to come by boasting “well, of course Bea was reading Proust when she was eight, in the original French, bien sur.”

As for baby Bea, she has read six pages (more than I have ever read) and is still very fond of it. I hope she experiences a similar love affair to the one I had with The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and the Famous Five at her age.

Her new hero Proust describes it very well: “There are perhaps no days of our childhood we lived so fully as those we spent with a favorite book.” 

Copyright: Helena Frith Powell 2009

We leave the day after tomorrow. In fact Hugo and Rupes left yesterday. We are staying on until the last possible moment to let Olivia’s ear infection clear up and also to enjoy some last-minute walks around the green fields.

Yesterday we spent the day in Annecy with my mother (who flew in from Rome) and our great friends Jean-Claude and Alex as well as their children Astrid and Elisa. Olivia and Elisa have been best friends since they were one. We met Jean-Claude when I fell in love with one of his wines and a friend of ours was looking for suppliers for his London wine bar. He is an amazing man, he now has an incredibly successful wine-making business, selling millions of bottles all over the world, but he also has time to do things like sell our car for us (which he did a few weeks ago) and give me advice about my novel which is about a housewife turned winemaker.

Annecy by the way has to be one of the nicest places I have ever visited; there is a stunning lake, great shops and swans gliding around the city centre’s waterways. Here is Leo on a boat on the lake.

My mother, the children and I are back with our other great friends Norrie and Mary. It feels like coming home. And talking of home….THE house. Well the news is not good. They want a price much closer to the asking price than we can come up with. That may change of course and I am not giving up. Meanwhile the upside is we can stay here and I can’t think of anywhere else I relax quite as much. The children are off playing with the rabbits and I am in Norrie’s office catching up with some work and admin. It also means we don’t have the stress of trying to sell Sainte Cecile and all the worry of what to do if it did sell (there are tenants there until March) or the expense of moving. And to some extent the heartbreak of leaving our family home of nine years.

It has been a lovely holiday and I do have that ‘going back to school’ feeling today. But I am not sad to be going back. I have great friends there too whom I am longing to see. And I am looking forward to getting back into my yoga/work/school routine. Last night I spoke to Rupert who said “It’s nice to be home.” So I guess for the moment Abu Dhabi is where home is. We’ll see what happens in the future.

The other great news is that the updated edition of Ciao Bella is in the window of Waterstone’s in High Street Kensington. Bang in the middle according to my friend Peter who saw it there. This is it, if you see it, buy it please. Then maybe one day we will be able to afford THE house!

Copyright: Helena Frith Powell 2009

There is good news and bad news. The bad news is I have had a terrible review of my new book on Amazon. The reviewer says there is no way the diet could be carried out at home. Which is exactly the one thing we all worked so very hard to achieve.

The good news is that To Hell in High Heels has been sold abroad. To Poland to be precise. They are going to print 5,000 copies and give me an advance. It is not America, but it’s a start.

Today is Friday. The girls have gone ice-skating in Al Ain with their Arab family (Ali from next door, his wife and eight daughters). Rupert is watching the cricket and Leo is playing the piano – naked. Maybe he could start a trend. A TV show and several best-selling books. I bet he would get better reviews than his mother.

Copyright: Helena Frith Powell 2009

I am not talking about human babies, but books. Today my latest book comes out; The Viva Mayr Diet – 14 Days to a Flatter Stomach and a Younger You.

I have decided that books are a little like babies, if a little more profitable. They have a gestation period, a birth (launch) and then they take on a life of their own.

This evening we will drink some champagne to celebrate number five. And tomorrow I start work on baby number six…..

Copyright: Helena Frith Powell 2009

It has been a great week.

I went to see the cellist Mathew Barley perform Bach’s cello suites at the British School here. It was truly amazing, as he said, there isn’t a note out of place. We could practically touch him we were so close.

I have slept through the night three times.

We have booked our summer holiday to the Savoie.

I interviewed an old Etonian, former model, Leonardo di Caprio’s body double and England cricketer who is now a famous artist. It’s not a bad job.

My latest book, the Viva Mayr Diet, is going to be serialised in the Daily Mail.

I bought my first piece of new designer kit (the only other has been from my favourite London second-hand designer store), by a brilliant designer I interviewed called Maria Grachvogel. An investment for the future. I have decided that the older you become the more exquisite your clothes need to be. It was a bit of a ‘couture’ experience, in a private room at the Westin Hotel in Dubai, just me, the designer and her commercial director. Now Angelina Jolie and I have even more in common…

I interviewed an anti-ageing expert who is 58 but looks about 40. And now that I have all her tips I plan on doing the same. (You will get them too, I just need to write the article).

I went for a drink with some friends on the 64th floor of a Dubai building and we watched fountains dance in a light-show on the ground beneath us as we sipped wine and chatted.

I had my nails painted a deep plum colour – very Cruella de Ville.

Above-mentioned artist (who also worked on George Clooney’s latest film) says he will take my book Ciao Bella to Cannes with him because he thinks it will make a great film and that Penelope Cruz should play me.

And now it’s the weekend….what’s not to like?

Copyright: Helena Frith Powell 2009