Helena’s view on present trends

Lifestyle suggestions and uplifting experiences

By the time it got to Saturday evening, none of us could remember exactly when we’d last seen him, we only knew he was missing. We’d rolled in at 2am that morning after an evening of wine and music with an octogenarian friend of ours (these 80 somethin …

I am reading The Leopard at the moment, Don Fabrizio reminds me so much of my father, he’s almost a literary incarnation of him. It is just over three years ago since my father died. I wrote some of this at the time, and have added to it. We miss you b …

There are several stages of parenting, and you tend to share them with your girlfriends. The excitement of the first pregnancy scan, the birth, followed by the toddler stage, comparing first steps and first words, the funny things they say, the adorabl …

Today is my father’s birthday. Or at least it would have been, but he died in January 2014. I didn’t really know him until I was a teenager. My mother and he split up when I was two. She and I moved to Sweden then England and we had no contact with him …

Never mind what everyone wore to the Oscars. This is clearly THE jacket to be seen in this week. There I was innocently knocking up a soup last night when my daughter sent me a text with a picture of a jacket from some trendy website with a picture of …

The other night I had a drink with a friend of mine who had just had lunch with her parents. She took a sip of her wine and sighed. “For everything they’ve ever taught me, I may as well be an orphan,” she said. My friend had what I would describe as a …

This is not usually a forum for serious topics, but I want to highlight Vicki’s story. She is a friend of a friend, who is in the process of escaping from her husband and emotional abuser. They have three small children, twins aged four and a toddler b …