On our way to the south of France from England, Leo and I passed the time listening to Desert Island Disks podcasts. One of the best ones was Bear Grylls. He spoke about his decision to climb Everest as he lay in hospital with a broken back.
It was in part this that inspired our adventure today to a rock we have named Wright’s rock, about a mile from the house. I have a vague memory of climbing it once before, but I was sure there was a path. Today there was not. And as we stood looking at the sheer stone rock-face we were going to have to climb to get to the top I felt less like Bear Grylls and more like the vertiginous coward I really am.

My husband was all for it. He has some new walking boots and wanted to try them out. Leo was keen too, and started climbing immediately. I stomped off in a downward direction convinced they were both going to fall and refusing to watch. It was all about to end in tears when Olivia came to the rescue, discovering a slightly less horrendous way up that involved crawling under a tree.
We all made it to the top, which had seemed impossible ten minutes earlier. “There,” said my husband, surveying the stunning views. “We’ve all achieved something today.”
“Let’s go home for a cup of tea,” I suggested. And we started looking for a way down. No one ever really talks about getting down, it’s all about reaching the pinnacle, getting to the summit, scaling the heights etc. How come no one ever mentions getting down?
The way down in not to be underestimated, especially not when you are dealing with bare cliff-face. My husband admitted that he had put us all through the adventure of climbing up to make sure we weren’t deprived of that lovely sense of achievement. “But I’m sure there is a path down somewhere,” he smiled.
I thought about killing him on the spot, but decided to wait until he’d found the path.
He didn’t find the path, so we had a rather harrowing descent, mainly on our bottoms. I have never been so happy to see a gravel track in my life.

The moral of the story is two-fold; definitely push yourself beyond your comfort zone, you’ll feel great afterwards (and really enjoy your cup of tea). But don’t forget about the way down. While I was happy to get to the top, I was even happier to get to the bottom.

I remember when I was at school we used to have to write an essay at the beginning of term about our summer holidays. I could never really think about much to write, except of course for the summer when my mother and I escaped from her third husband in her purple Ford Cortina and drove from England to Italy to meet my real father.

This summer we did so much I don’t really know where to begin. We started in London and ended in London, but in between went to Paris, Sainte Cecile, (our house in the south of France) Yorkshire and Scotland. Miraculously I was able to work from everywhere and I can’t see a situation where I will be forced to spend the summer here again.

We played the ‘what was the best bit’ game on the way back to Abu Dhabi, and all of us found it impossible to pick one thing. But among the highlights were:

The Chelsea football school and winning player of the week (Leo)

Being at Sainte Cecile (Bea)

Eating duck in Chinatown (Olivia)

Playing golf at his club and lunch at le train bleu (Rupert, see below pic)

My highlights included; food shopping at Waitrose (yes, I am a boring middle- class woman whose idea of a good time is spotting a box of Bendick’s bittermints or full-fat Organic Devon milk), realising how much I love Sainte Cecile as a holiday home, seeing friends (best thing of all actually, even better than the Bendick’s), travelling on London buses just gazing out of the window at the shops and life on the street, playing tennis on the most beautiful grass court ever in the English summer sun in Yorkshire, two visits to Stamford Bridge to watch us win (as well as Frank Lampard warming up just in front of me).

I was in a total panic about coming back here, desperate for something to happen to make it possible for me to stay there. But now I’m here, I’m pleased to be home. The kids are pleased to be back too, although Bea was apparently the only child in her class who said so.

The children loved England, and they seemed totally at home roaming around London on the buses and tubes, going shopping and meeting friends. Next year the plan is to send them all to school there, which I’m really happy about. I want them to have strong links to Europe, not just because our friends and family are there, but because eventually they will live there.

But for the moment it is a place we go for our holidays, and I can’t wait for the next one.

Copyright: Helena Frith Powell 2012

Our weekend with Marguerite is going well so far. She has got used to us wearing knotted handkerchiefs on our heads and eating nothing but jelly and baked beans.

Bea had a bad go on her new pink bike. In fact she was complaining about how bad a bike-rider Marguerite is when she drove into the back of me and crashed. She has a horrible cut on her knee. Leo hit his head on the table when he stood up after rescuing his yellow car from the floor, Marguerite got her finger caught in a folding table (dangerous things these tables) and Olivia was stung by a bee. She concluded it was a “hurtie day”.

We had a lovely picnic at annual event just over the hill which involves sitting in the sunshine drinking wine and eating while listening to music and occasionally popping up to various stalls which sell wine, food and goat’s cheese. The children ran around having fun, we ate and drank far too much and had a perfect time. We were with some friends whom we invited to pop by for tea and a swim on their way home.

Sadly after all that wine and goat’s cheese not only Rupert and I, but Bea and Leo were passed out by the pool when they showed up. We were all naked, as is our habit when swimming alone (another custom for Marguerite to share with the rest of the village when she escapes). Rupert luckily had his straw hat strategically covering some of him but the rest of us were just plain undressed.

When we stumbled upstairs for a cup of tea we found a note: ‘Popped by but you were all asleep by the pool, see you very soon we hope’. ‘But maybe not so much of you’ they might have added.

Finally, Madeleine. The agony goes on. But is this a generational thing? The father of a friend of mine had the following conversation with him yesterday:

“This Madeleine thing….do you think the world is having a Diana moment?”

“Why?” asked my friend.

“Well, if we’d lost one of you, I mean of course we would have been upset, but we would have got over it.”

“How long do you think that would have taken you?”

“Oh, I would say about a week.”

Copyright: Helena Frith Powell 2007

This morning was one of those mornings that make me even happier than I usually am that we moved here. For some reason the children were nice to me, and to each other. Even Max the cat was spared his normal morning tail-pulling from Leonardo.

I took the girls off to their gym course in Pezenas. It is the school holidays and they are doing gym and art every day from 9.30 to 4pm. This is costing us a total of £30 for both girls for the whole week. Amazing considering we paid more than that for half a day in a Sussex nursery when we only had one child. They skipped behind me with their friend Manon, happily discussing various ‘books’ they are writing which they assure me will make them a lot of money. Yeah, right, I know all about that. I’m sure with my aunt disinheriting me the books I have written so far have actually lost me more money than they’ll ever make me. But I didn’t mention that to them. As their subject matters are clowns, water and fire I doubt they’ll offend any remaining rich relations.

Having dropped them off I went shopping. By the time I arrived at M. Clerc’s shop I already had my hands full. Once there I bought fresh asparagus, artichokes, cherry tomatoes and lots more goodies.

As I went to leave with all my shopping he said: “Wouldn’t you rather swing by with the car?” What a sweetheart. Minutes later I arrived and pulled up on the pavement, holding up the traffic behind me. M. Clerc loaded my shopping in, told me I looked beautiful and gave me a kiss goodbye.

There are two main reasons this little episode makes me glad we live here; first there is no more charming grocer on the face of the earth than Jean-Luc Clerc, shopping with him is a joy and however tempted I am sometimes to move to somewhere a little more exciting or closer to a plate of proper Italian pasta I know I won’t leave until he retires. Second no one here would give you a hard time for holding up the traffic while your lunch is loaded into your car. Is there anywhere more civilised to live than France?

Yesterday we had a picnic at our almond grove. That makes it sound very grand, which it’s not. We have around sixty almond trees and a little hut, known as a mazet. There is about an acre of land with a river at the bottom of it and a vineyard lining one side. We can just see our house from it, up on the hill in the distance.

We invited about twenty friends, everyone brought something, mainly children. They had a great time, building houses out of sticks, wading in the river, cycling up and down the small road, playing with the dogs. As Tom, one friend observed; “Children always seem to move at high speed, imagine if we did the same as adults.” The only high speed thing about the adults was their drinking.

To eat we had oysters, salads, quiches, grilled meats, olives, cheeses, divine chocolate chip cookies and apple tarts; everyone came laden with food, almost all of it home-made and delicious. As a way to have a Sunday lunch-party it beats the hell out of standing over a hot oven praying your roast potatoes will look like they were cooked by Nigella and not Mr Bean.

There was a mixture of French, English, Irish and Australians. A good mix of nationalities. But the one thing all their children will have in common will be that they will, in all probability, speak French for life. Which of course is reason enough in itself to move here. French is possibly the most impossible language to get a grip on (outside the really tricky ones like Chinese and Russian). Practically every time I speak I worry I have got something wrong. The poems my children have to learn off by heart at school seem to get increasingly incomprehensible.

It’s a funny thing. Some days my French seems to work and on others it just stalls, like an old car that hasn’t been started for a few years. Even the children are beginning to notice. When I told Olivia recently I had to watch the French news for work and so we couldn’t watch cartoons she looked at me with pity: “But mummy,” she said. “You don’t understand it anyway.”

Is that why France seems like such a nice place to live?

Copyright: Helena Frith Powell 2007

Spring is here. I know because the sun is shining, the flowers are blooming and a yellow and black salamander keeps falling into the pool. We are on constant pool-watch and have already rescued him three times. We even put some bleach in to try to deter him, but he’s a stubborn little thing.

It’s a relief to send the children off to school without coats and gloves, but for them the hard work is just beginning. I saw on French television yesterday that the government has concluded children are lacking in vocabulary. “They know the word for flower,” said an official spokesman. “But they can’t distinguish between, for example, a hyacinth and an iris.” Well, there is something we have in common, because neither can I. So once again I am in awe of the French educational system and relieved that my children will grow up to be so much more accomplished than I am.

Copyright: Helena Frith Powell 2007