Travels with my in-laws

Posted on March 11, 2009 by Helena

My in-laws arrived for a week’s visit yesterday. Yesterday I spent the evening with my father-in-law trying to get his hearing aid fixed. He is an example of how to go through life; happy and charming. We went to the Oxford Medical Centre first.

“Do you think I get a discount having been at Oxford?” he asked me. I said it was worth a try. Then we went into the building and explained the problem to the receptionist.

“I can see how lovely you are,” said my father-in-law. “But I can’t hear you.”

Sadly they couldn’t help but they gave us the name of somewhere that could. On the way out a group of youths were standing by my car.

“I wish those youths would get away from my car,” I snarled in my typical ‘expecting the worst’ fashion. My father-in-law walked towards them without a moment’s doubt. They moved aside and opened the door for him.

“It’s nice to see the young still have some manners,” he said to them before turning to me. “And I include you in that.”

Told you he was charming.

As I write he is on the golf course, aged 84, probably beating Rupert and our friend James (who is even younger than moi). That’s how to age gracefully.
Copyright: Helena Frith Powell 2009

Grandparents reunited

Posted on December 28, 2008 by Helena

My father came for Christmas. He is 84 and wrote a novel last year which won a major literary prize in Italy in September. He is an incredible character. Despite the fact that we have never lived together (my parents split up when I was two) he has an uncanny ability to work out whatever happens to be worrying me and giving me good advice.

This Christmas his travelling companion was my mother. It was lovely to see them together; amusing and rather unusual. They act a little like an old married couple. One morning my mother noticed his flies were undone.

“Your flies are undone,” she said.

“Of course they are,” he replied. “I left them undone for you to tell me to do them up. Otherwise what use are you?”

Rupert asked my father if he thought I am more like him or my mother.

“I ignore anything that is not like me in Helena,” he said. “I have the impression that I made her all myself.”

My mother, who has a generous nature and plenty of humour, lets this kind of comment slide.

But it is an odd thing, that when I look into his eyes, I have the impression that I am looking into my own.

They have gone now. My father is on to his next novel and wants to take my mother with him to Poland where he needs to go to do some research. I’m not sure she’s tempted by the idea of Poland with a literary genius who forgets to do his flies up, but you never know. And they were such fun to be with, I might go along myself.

I wish you a Merry Christmas

Posted on December 24, 2008 by Helena

For me this Christmas really began with Leo and his ballet performance at Abu Dhabi Mall to the tune of ‘We wish you a Merry Christmas’. Now we are almost there. It is Christmas Eve and I am sitting by a roaring fire with our Credit Crunch Christmas Tree (donated by a friend from his garden but slightly skinny and collapsing under the weight of the decorations, my mother asked if it was upside down) planning the big day.

Sadly only Leo still believes in Father Christmas. Olivia sussed him out a few weeks ago and of course where she goes, Bea follows. I have not confirmed that he doesn’t exist.I just can’t bring myself to. I remember the feeling of loss I had when I realised he was not real. So I just say ‘he exists if you believe in him’.

Wolfie my gorgeous dog showed up, covered me in kisses, ate three meals and then….left again. Typical male. But it was so nice to see him. I am torn between wanting him to come back and dreading it because saying goodbye again will be too awful.

Being home is still heavenly. I can’t think of a nicer place to spend Christmas Day. We have ordered a turkey, planned the bread sauce and all I need now is some time to wrap the stocking fillers.

Not for the first time in my life I am wishing Father Christmas really did exist….

Guinea Pigs looking for a good home

Posted on August 25, 2008 by Helena

My friend Amanda sent me an email with an attachment describing three guinea pigs looking for a home. “Very cute four week old guinea pigs looking for a home,” it reads. “We like to stroll around, squeak all the time for food and we love to cuddle. All we need is a cage, hay, water and pellets.”

I thought I might solve our housing crisis by sending out a similar one for the children. This is how it might read if written by Olivia:

Three very cute and lovely children looking for a home in central Abu Dhabi. Must be a large house, have sea view and be close to the French school so we can come home for snacks should we need to. Would also prefer walking distance to Marina Mall or possibly driver on hand to take us there.

We like to shop. Leo doesn’t much, but that doesn’t matter. We also like to play Nintendo DS games; someone with a library of said games (especially Super Mario) would be preferential. Or in any case enough money to buy them. If you have a spare room for our parents that would be good too, but we’re not really fussed.

We eat almost anything; Bea will try to eat nothing but chocolate cereal, but don’t let her. We must have pasta at least once a week please. We also need a TV with programmes we like such as Hannah Montana. If we have to share a room, then Bea and I could, but could you put Leo in his own room please because he snores. You will like him a lot, everyone does, he is blond and charming. It gets a bit irritating actually.

That’s it. We’re very nice, not that much trouble. Well, Bea is a bit. But you’ll get used to her. Leo is fine as long as he has a ball to play with. And I’m very useful if you ever lose anything as I remember everything. Thanks. Oh can I have a mobile phone please? A pink one. Don’t give one to Bea, she’ll only break it. She just broke mummy’s. Leo wouldn’t know what to do with one because he’s a boy. Please write soon. Mummy is going mad with us all in the hotel and it’s getting boring.

Flat thumb, thin thumb

Posted on August 23, 2008 by Helena

Today I made a most remarkable discovery. To understand just how remarkable we need to go back in time more than thirty years to when I was a little girl and playing with my some conically-shaped weights that belonged to my grandfather. I can’t remember how old I was, possibly seven. I was swinging said weights around in large circles above my head and back down again as fast as I possibly could.

“Don’t do that,” said my mother.

The next minute I had managed to get my thumb caught between them and totally squashed it. It really hurt. I still remember the pain. My mother put my thumb in cold water then hot water. But nothing helped.

As a result of my own stupidity, I have lived with a flat thumb since that day. When I was a teenager I was ashamed of it and would curl it up in my palm, hiding it like a deformity. In later years I have grown used to it. It is actually quite useful. For example I can never remember which is left or which is right, especially in moments of severe stress, like when I am map-reading. “Flat thumb or thin thumb?” shouts Rupert just as we’re about to miss the turning. Flat thumb is right, thin thumb is left.

Olivia This morning on our way to the club I noticed to my total and utter amazement that Olivia has a flat thumb – and she has never been stupid enough to squash it. Somehow my flat thumb must have become part of my genetic make-up and as she is identical to me in every aspect, she has inherited it. Incredible. There is just as much difference between her thumbs as mine. And it is her right thumb that is flat, just like mine.

The other two don’t have this genetic quirk. Bea has two flat thumbs, one rather more chewed than the other on account of her constantly sucking it. Leo has very elegant thumbs, like his father.

Was Olivia upset by this discovery? Not a bit of it. “I’m just like you mummy,” she said, giving me an uneven thumbs up.

Mamma Mia!

Posted on July 22, 2008 by Helena

Stockholm seemed a fitting place to see the film version of Mamma Mia! Julia and I saw the musical a few years ago in London and loved it. As it was raining yesterday I took the four children off in search of a cinema. We eventually found one and settled down with our popcorn to a real treat. We were in the middle of the front row, my favourite place to sit.

The film is brilliant; we all loved it. I particularly related to the plot because part of it hinges on who is going to give the girl away at her wedding. I had a similar conundrum at mine. By then my step-father and I had fallen out, so he was off the list. My real father seemed an obvious second choice (although he had practically nothing to do with bringing me up). So he was dragged along to Sweden, along with around 100 other guests.

The morning of the big day he left. He has still to fully explain himself but has said he finds weddings so “bourgeois”. So I was left with two major problems. One, who was going to do the Dante reading and two, who was going to walk me up the aisle. I asked my Italian aunt if she would do the reading.

“But I don’t know if my hat will go with Dante,” she said. Perfectly understandable. But she did it, and read beautifully. I asked my mother to walk me up the aisle and give me away. It was an emotional moment and fitting as my mother is the person who brought me up and the one closest to me by far.

I won’t tell you what happens in the film, but go and see it. I felt like clapping and singing, rather like we did in the musical, but being in Sweden I suppressed my desires for fear of arrest for unruly behaviour.

The kids loved it. “I sunged all the songs,” Leo told me. “Oh why is it finished?” wailed Olivia at the end. Meryl Streep was, as always, totally amazing. I read somewhere she wrote to the boys from ABBA and asked if she could be in any film version they made.

She was the perfect choice, rather like my mother was at my wedding.

Deport them

Posted on January 8, 2008 by Helena

A teenage bride who came to Leeds for an arranged marriage has been beaten to death during a “prolonged and vicious attack” by her young husband over a three-week period, all with the collaboration of his relations who apparently took an instant dislike to her.

Sabia Rani, aged 19, from Pakistan, married Shazad Khan, aged 25 in January 2006. She suffered bruising to 90 per cent of her body, sustaining horrific injuries that would normally only be seen in victims of a car crash. Paramedics found her dead in her bathroom.

Sabia Rani

The family blamed “evil spirits, curses and black magic” for the horrendous injuries, but the truth is that Sabia’s broken ribs were caused by her husband stamping on them. He was convicted of her murder last year. The police are now prosecuting Sabia’s mother-in-law, sister-in-law and her husband for allowing the death of “a vulnerable adult” and perjury.

While I applaud the fact that the rest of the family is being prosecuted, I don’t think it is enough. If you have a dog who repeatedly attacks your children, you put him down. He is not willing or able to abide by the rules of your household so he is no longer welcome.

So it should be with people who are not willing or able to abide by the rules of our society. Personally I would put them down, but a more politically viable option would be to deport them. Unless we send a strong message to those living under these medieval beliefs and customs the “honour” killings and abuse of women will continue.

And before you start writing to me harping on about human rights, do you really believe that someone who does this kind of thing can be called human and therefore have any such rights?

In colonial India the British put an end to the ritual of Sati or Suttee, the burning of a newly-widowed woman on her husband’s funeral pyre.

The locals told Sir Charles Napier that it was their “custom” to burn widows.

“You say that it is your custom to burn widows. Very well. We also have a custom: when men burn a woman alive, we tie a rope around their necks and we hang them. Build your funeral pyre; beside it, my carpenters will build a gallows. You may follow your custom. And then we will follow ours,” he told them.

How many more young girls will die at the hands of their families before we have the courage to act against these “customs”?

(Read the Daily Mail article: ‘Family turned a blind eye’ as teenage bride was beaten to death by arranged husband)

Christmas comes but once a year….

Posted on December 22, 2007 by Helena

“‘Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house

Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse;

The stockings were hung by the chimney with care,

In the hopes that St Nicholas soon would be there.”

This little ditty from the American writer Clement C Moore may give the impression of peace and harmony in our home. Not true. Once again Christmas has arrived without my permission.

bells

I was going to be so organised this year. Start buying presents in July, get all the Swedish things going like the candles you burn every week until the BIG DAY. Order organic, hand-made advent calenders that the children will love and nurture forever, have the stocking fillers and presents beautifully wrapped and hidden by October.

None of this happened. Instead of writing at my desk I should be hiding in the downstairs loo wrapping stocking fillers. The advent calenders are the cheapest awful chocolate ones from the supermarket bought on December 1st and I still have to buy Bea’s main present.

Christmas Fairy

Christmas comes but once a year. So you’d think I would be prepared for it. Why do I never remember that time between December 10th and 25th goes at double speed.

This year for the first time we are invited to some French friends on Christmas Eve. As a Swede I am not averse to celebrating Christmas on Christmas Eve. But I have heard that in France one goes to midnight mass and then has dinner AFTERWARDS. Meanwhile Santa will have been and dropped off all the presents. So assuming we have the usual seven courses I should be home just in time to stuff the turkey and pop it in the oven for lunch.

Why Tony Blair has converted to Catholisism I can’t understand. Especially just BEFORE Christmas Eve. You’d think he’d have hung on for a few days, avoided midnight mass and got an early night.

The apero a grande vitesse

Posted on October 29, 2007 by Helena

The school holidays have started. They have coincided with my husband being away (funny that) and a kidney infection. A better woman than me would have remained calm, collected and zen. I have never been grumpier.

“What’s work?” Olivia asked me yesterday. Well, you could define work as going down a mine for example, or being Chief Financial Officer of Barclays bank (for which you would be paid a basic salary of £600,000 and a bonus of £450,000). Or you could define work as looking after your children, for which no one will pay you. But you are expected to be eternally dedicated, grateful, patient etc.

Of course children can be a total joy and they are amazing as well as lovely, some of the time. My husband calls our children “our greatest creation” which I agree with. But for some reason half-term has turned ours into marauding lunatics, ready to kill each other at any given moment. They are not just bickering, they are violent. Yesterday the trampoline was the scene for a monumental battle between Bea and Leo. By the time I got there Bea was injured and weeping and Leo was stomping up towards the house shouting “she hurt me first”.

This goes on all day. They fight about who should sit where, who should go through a door first, who used the right crayon or the wrong one, who is allowed to look at Bea’s mermaid book, who should get in the bath, who should get out and so on. There is nothing too trivial to fight about.

By 6pm I am exhausted, depressed, angry and just about losing the will to live. So I down chilled Sauvignon Blanc at breakneck speed. By 6.20 I am on my second glass. By 6.40 I have lost count. I call it The Aperitif a Grande Vitesse. It works for me. Suddenly the arguing seems less irritating and anyway, it’s only an hour or so to go until bed. Then I can have a glass of red to celebrate.