New look 2012

Posted on December 22, 2011 by helena

When I was buying Christmas presents for the girls this week I was struck by how very different the kinds of things I was looking at were from last year. There is nothing in a toy department that would interest them now, for example. Gone are the pet shops and the furry animals.Their Christmas lists were all about clothes from Forever 21, bits for their BlackBerries and other ‘grown-up’ things, such as fountain pens or new curtains.
Much as I loathe those round robin ‘oh it’s been another frightfully good year in the Frith Powell/Wright household’ I do think it’s a perfect time of year to look back. I am guessing if you’re here in the first place, you must be interested. And to mark the end of 2011, I have a new look, hope you like it.
I will start with work. This year was my first full year as editor of M magazine. It has been brilliant, I love my team and the product, which I feel just gets better and better. It has also been the single most challenging year of my professional life, because of changes to my working environment. But it’s all too tedious to relate here, and quite frankly I have wasted enough time droning on about it.
The latest book is missing around 20,000 words and a satisfying ending, I was hoping to get it done before Christmas but that is not going to happen. Still, I am happy with it so far if rather nervous about the proposed title: How to turn your husband into your lover. My publisher, whom I utterly adore, believes in the old adage of ‘sex sells”. He is right of course.
As I said, the girls are growing up at an alarming rate. Olivia is quite the most elegant creature I have ever seen, and is doing really well at school. We had a letter from the head of her year congratulating her on her great report. Bea is becoming more and more beautiful but now I sound like a ‘smug married’ so won’t go on. She has a boyfriend, he is sooo cute and plays football and piano (grade 8). I fear it’s all downhill from here….Leo is still the sporting superstar, utterly obsessed and determined to join Chelsea FC and turn their fortunes around. The sooner the better frankly.
I started with work and return to work. As I write I am having my hair blow-dried in preparation for Rupert’s leaving party. He has resigned from the National and as soon as I can I will tell you what his next move is. It’s really exciting and may mean we stay here for a few years to come. Which I am actually beginning to like the idea of. As long as we have La Belle Maison to escape to when the heat sets in….
Happy Christmas and a very Happy New Year

Bea has a boyfriend

Posted on October 11, 2011 by helena

Baby Bea (almost 11) has a boyfriend. Rather confusingly he is called Leo, but apparently has lovely curly black hair and is very cute. They have so far carried out a rather Middle-Eastern style relationship, in that it was arranged, and they never really meet.

When Bea broke the news to me that she was no longer single, I asked her how she had gone about acquiring a boyfriend. “Well, we heard he liked me, and then Olivia made him,” she told me. Olivia apparently “made” him by telling him Bea was about to be asked out by someone else. That girl is so smart it’s scary. On the day Steve Jobs died her one comment was “does that mean Apple goods will become cheaper?”

Bea is on a bit of a roll. Last week was the class photo. “Can we have the pretty girl in the middle please?” asked the photographer. Bea was thrilled, as was, I should think, Leo, even if he was bullied into the “relationship” by her older sister. Olivia is on to her second boyfriend, having been chucked the first one, the son of one of Olivia’s favourite teachers at school. My friend who works at the school told me that said teacher apparently told her son that he had “blown it”.

“All other potential daughters-in-law will pale in comparison to Olivia,” she said to him. The poor boy is only 12, but his mother is confident he will never find anyone as good again. And secretly of course, so am I. Although I can’t help feeling that if she really wanted him back, she could have arranged it. Or maybe got her sister involved…..

La rentrée

Posted on September 5, 2011 by helena

I am at home today in order to focus on what the French call la rentrée and what we know as going back to school. It is a big day for the Wright/Frith Powell children. Olivia moves up to Year 8, Bea starts senior school (Year 7) and Leo moves to the same school as the girls, the British School Al Khubairat, joining Year 4.

When we moved here three years ago they were in the French system. That seems like a different world now. A world full of hideous French homework and no school uniforms. Much as I love a bit of liberté, the thought of the girls fighting over a pair of leggings for the next ten years is enough to make me lose the will to live.

Rupert and I took them to school together. I used to hate going to new schools, mainly because of my stupid surname, which the teacher would invariably get wrong and everyone would laugh hysterically. See how well I married? Not much to get wrong with Wright. If any of ours were nervous, they didn’t show it.

There was one dodgy moment when we walked into the main reception along with a few hundred other children and I saw Bea wobble, but then her best friend bounded up to us and all was well.

The girls quickly went off with their friends and we took Leo to the gymnasium where the new primary school children were gathered.

“What year are you?” asked the friendly organiser.

“Year 4,” I replied.

“You might do quite well this time around,” said Rupes.

We left Leo in the hands of his teacher Mr Jones and came home. I am trying to imagine how they are getting on, and what they will have to tell me when I collect them. I am also so excited at the prospect of time alone that I have planned several hundred things to do in the few hours they are away such as have coffee with a friend (this is how some people LIVE), write my book, watch the US Open, sort out my emails, wash my hair and have a sleep.

But mostly I will be thinking about my little English schoolchildren, and hoping they are having a good rentrée.

Moustache? What moustache?

Posted on July 16, 2011 by helena

When I was a little girl, we lived at a place called Home Farm, just outside Newbury in Berkshire. We rented part of a house on the farm. There was a lot to do in the English countryside; making houses with bails of straw, for example, and cycling around the lanes. But by far my favourite thing was hitting a tennis ball against a wall in one of the large barns. When the calves were there, they would watch if there was no food to eat, but otherwise I was alone.
I was mad about tennis even then. I collected a scrapbook of all the press clipping when Virginia Wade won Wimbledon in1977. I tried to get into the team at my school, Shaw House School for Girls. It was all going swimmingly until I told the captain, Agnes, how to deal with her facial hair problem. I’m not sure she thought she had a problem with facial hair and thus what could have been a celebrated school career was cruelly thwarted. I never even got to try out for the team.

This morning I was delighted to find that Leo has discovered the joys of hitting a ball against a wall. All the furniture downstairs was moved (it is too hot to hit outside) and there he was, blissfully practicing hie forehand and backhand. We even had a little rally together, us against the wall. The wall won of course, it always does.

I am happy to announce that in addition to the wall, Leo has discovered the joy of playing tennis (we have played every evening since we got back), watching tennis (when I was ill with food poisoning this weekend he lay on my bed with me and watched four hours of tennis clips on Youtube) and learning about tennis (we get lessons from a website called Fuzzy Yellow Balls), as well as talking about tennis at every given opportunity.

This is all ideal for me, because poor Rupert has had enough. “My last wife was obsessed with golf, and you’re obsessed with tennis. Can’t I just have a normal wife?” he complained yesterday as I was telling him of my plans for Leo’s tennis-playing future. Clearly he needs to win Wimbledon, as soon as possible, and my plan is to recruit Rafa as his coach once he retires (just in case you have forgotten what Rafa looks like, here’s his picture).

So as long as Leo stays keen, I will always have someone to talk to, and I won’t ever have to hit a ball against a wall again. Once he starts school again in September I will also impress on him the importance of telling the school captain how fetching his moustache is.

Middle Class no more

Posted on June 19, 2011 by helena

OK, so I would have preferred him to become a tennis player, but it seems that if he is destined for sporting greatness Leo will be a footballer. But it will not be an easy journey. I just thought that people were born with amazing talent (which he clearly is!) and then became rich and famous.

Apparently not, according to a brilliant book I am reading called ‘Bounce – How Champions Are Made’ all about the secrets of success. It’s all about the ’10,000 hours’ Matthew Syed the author says. Even Mozart, who is considered a child prodigy, had had 6,500 hours of music practice by the time he was 10. So it wasn’t the fact that he was incredibly talented that made him so brilliant, but rather his father pestering him to play musical instruments all day every day. In fact he didn’t start composing his best work until he was in his twenties, by which time he had notched up the golden 10,000 hours.

I discussed the whole sporting greatness thing with Jamie, a friend of mine who is in sports management. “Leo doesn’t stand a chance,” he told me. “You’re far too middle class and nice. Middle class kids don’t become sporting superstars.” He has a point. Look at the way Agassi became the tennis player he was. His father made him hit 2,500 balls A DAY. The Williams sister were in full-time training by the time they were three. And Tiger Woods could hole a put before he could walk properly. Am I prepared to go to such extremes in order to make sure Leo is the new Lampard? In any case, it’s probably too late by now. He’s already seven, so over the hill by these standards.

Still, I am prepared to make some efforts. Today at work my friend Katie told me about how Beckham had a tyre in his garden which he used to kick a football through. When he had got it through 100 times he would go in for his tea. I told Leo about this, whose little eyes lit up. “I’ve got just the perfect thing mummy,” he said scurrying off to come back a minute later with my Pilates ring. So we have rigged it up and he has already got the ball through four times.

Only another 96 to go……middle-class, moi?

A good book

Posted on June 2, 2011 by helena

I am almost at the end of the most brilliant book called Persepolis by an Iranian woman called Marjane Satrapi.I know it’s not new and everyone else has probably already read it, but it has really brought home to me several things.
First, the joy of a good book. I woke up at 5.30 this morning and very quietly reached for it, there was just enough light to make out the words and the droll pictures (it is a comic book).

Second, it is the first time I have really understood what it must be like to live under an oppressive and hideous regime. Even though the Arab Spring is going on all around me, I have never really imagined what it means to families like ours, never been able to relate to it on a personal level. These are things that happen to other people. But Satrapi is so easy to relate to and so similar to people I know on so many levels that you feel the sheer injustice, stupidity and hypocrisy of the events around her almost as if they are happening to you. She writes and draws with such humour that you are totally captivated, as well as being shocked and disturbed by the story.
The other day I tried to explain to Olivia what the Arab Spring is. As someone who never does what she’s told, she found it inconceivable that whole nations live doing just that, with little or no personal freedom. It was tough to get through to her. “Why do they put up with it?” she asked. “Why don’t they just tell them to shut up.”
I think I will give her Persepolis to read, and I hope she relates to it as much as I have. Not just because I want her to understand oppression and injustice and political freedom and human rights. But because I want her to know what it feels like to really enjoy a good book.

Quality Time

Posted on April 20, 2011 by helena

I have decided that, as a busy working mother, if I want to spend time with my children, I need to find things I can do with them. I mean things that I would also otherwise be doing, such as playing tennis. The obvious candidate for tennis is of course our very own sporting hero, Leo. And in fact any other sport, such as throwing a rugby ball back and forth for an hour (yes I did this, very good for toning the arms) or trying to do keepy uppies (his record is five, mine is one) or watching football or tennis on TV.

With Bea, I have stretching and yoga. I am thrilled to announce that she, just like her sister Julia did at her age, has discovered gymnastics. And she is brilliant at it. She even opens the fridge door with her foot (check out my Facebook page for the video). We spend ages doing forward bends together and getting into impossible yoga poses, ideal. She is SO flexible, she can do all the things I can’t do (such as open the fridge door with her foot). Her back and front walkovers are a sight to behold.

Olivia has proved trickier. She likes skiing, which is not exactly easy here and which I hate, even in the sublime surroundings of the Alps. I tried to get her into tennis too with no joy. But we have discovered that we both love lying on her bed, holding hands and watching DVDs. At the moment we are watching the classic BBC Pride & Prejudice. “I love it so much, mummy,” she told me the other day. “Do they have a Season Two?”

I wish……that’s what I call quality time.

The Little Captain

Posted on February 21, 2011 by helena

I have been worried that Leo is far too nice for his own good. He never does anything remotely mean or nasty, is constantly kind and considerate and generally just gorgeous. But yesterday he proved that he has a little more mettle than I credit him with.

He is doing an Inter-Milan football training camp three times a week (he refused to go the Man United one, but an Italian team is acceptable, especially Jose’s old team). We walked from the pitch towards the car and he was grinning from ear to ear.

“Did you have fun?” I asked him.

“Mummy, there’s a boy in my football training that’s really mean to me. Today I was captain and I know he hates going in defense.

I told all my other players they could choose where they wanted to play and told him he had to go in defense. He got angry and shouted ‘I’m not going in defense’”.

“So what did you say?”

“I said ‘Yes you are. I’m the captain and you’ll do as you’re told.’ He was shouting in Arabic and all I could understand was the word ‘defense’.”

“So did he go in defense?” I asked him.

“Of course, he hadded to,” he smiled. “Revenge is…..good.”

It is indeed.

Fingers crossed tonight for Chelsea – thank goodness it is too late for us to watch it here, I’m not sure I can bear to see my little captain cry again….even if he can be tough at times.

And fingers crossed for me too….the sales figures are out this afternoon for the book.

The tennis bug…..

Posted on February 12, 2011 by helena

I have been trying in vain for years to turn one of my children into a potential tennis pro, or at least to engage them in the game enough to ensure I always have someone to play with .

Until yesterday, I had not been successful. Then came the breakthrough. I was actually hoping it would be one of the girls, as I rarely find anything they do amuses me (bitching at people on Facebook does not entertain me, nor does endlessly curling my hair). I was secretly hoping one or the other would suddenly stop complaining on court and wanting to go home and start trying to beat me. They have been having lessons since they could walk, but Olivia has given up completely and Bea, although she is getting better, does insist on doing cartwheels between each point which rather complicates things.

By the way, as this is a blog about tennis, I have taken the opportunity to share with you a picture of a semi-naked Rafa taken by my friend Karen. That is how close we were to him…

Of course it was Leo who had the ‘Eureka I love tennis’ moment. We were playing a mini-match and he was getting shots past me. Really good shots. Half-way through our match Bea dropped her ipod touch and the screen smashed into 100 pieces. Not surprisingly she went semi-hysterical. There was no consoling her.

“Don’t worry,” said Leo. “You can have mine, I don’t need it, I just want to play tennis.”

That’s my boy……

Ladies who lunch

Posted on January 14, 2011 by helena

Last week I joined the ladies who lunch brigade. Our lovely housemaid went off to Sri Lanka on holiday and so I decided to become a housewife for a few days. The plan was slightly complicated by the fact that I had to finish final edits on Love in a Warm Climate but other than that I behaved pretty much like those women I sometimes slightly despise, but mostly envy.

My days were not hard to fill. Making school lunches, cooking, playing tennis, washing, going to to beauty salons and, of course, having lunch. It’s amazing how quickly time goes when you are out of the office, it’s almost like the day takes on a whole other dimension. I can see how they call themselves “busy”. I mean a facial can take an hour and a half for heaven’s sake….

I wondered if the kids would be nicer/calmer/more like 1950s Mad Men ideal we all aspire to. They were no different really, although at one point Leo did ask me why I couldn’t work at home all the time.

The main difference was me. Even though I was getting up at 6am to do the lunchboxes and running around like a mad woman finding all those things Nerosa magically conjures up at any given moment such as rugby socks and swimming costumes, I felt so much calmer and looked forward to the day with relish because I looked forward to just hanging out at home so much. I love my job, but it was so nice to feel like I had less responsibilities for a few days.

It is now the weekend and I have a slight ‘going back to school’ feeling about next week. But I think once I get stuck in I’ll be fine. And if the book becomes a best-seller I can always try becoming a lady who lunches for a bit longer……..