Never mind the arrival of the Daily Mail in the region, the big news yesterday was that Louis has a girlfriend. “She’s called Elisa. They even kissed on the lips,” Leo told us when he came home from school. He was more scandalised than my mother was when I showed up at home with dreadlocks. Actually come to think of it, she wasn’t remotely scandalised.

Anyway, Leo was shocked. Disgusted from Tunbridge Wells. Then this evening he came home looking all pleased with himself.

“I kissed Louis’ girlfriend,” he told me happily chomping on a carrot.

“Didn’t he mind?” I asked.

“We was hiding,” he replied, somewhat smugly. This girl spells trouble, at four years old. So does my son.

“Mummy, who will I marry?” Leo asked after a minute or two.

“Who do you want to marry?” I asked.

“I don’t know. Maybe Louis’ girlfriend,” he said. “But definitely someone with long hair.”

Talking of marriage - one of the ways they may illustrate the Mail serialisation of the book is to show me ten years ago at our wedding (June 1998) and compare the picture with me now, wearing the same dress. Here is an exclusive sneak preview. The photographer kindly said I could publish it for free with a credit. His name is Ben Lister and his website is www.benlister.com.

When I sent my mother the picture she called to say how amazing it was that I could still get into the same dress ten years on. What most readers of the Mail won’t realise is that the back wasn’t done up.

So the pressing question of the day, apart from who will Leo marry, is when did my rib-cage grow, and why?

Copyright: Helena Frith Powell 2008

So it’s finally happened. Well I say finally, she is only seven, but it was only a matter of time. Bea has a boyfriend. She came home yesterday from the leisure centre where French schoolchildren spend half-term if they’re not skiing glowing with the news.

“I’ve got a boyfriend, I’ve got a boyfriend,” she chanted all around the house. I asked all the obvious questions like what does he look like, where does he live, what do his parents do, can he ride a bike, does he play rugby, where does he go to school?

“He looks like a girl,” said Bea. “And he’s got a girlfriend.” Then she went back to singing and prancing around the room like a ballerina on acid.

So not a great start is my conclusion. Rupert is more concerned for the boy, Sammie as he is called.

“In Papua New Guinea they advise you that if you have a car crash you should head for the airport immediately and get the first plane out of the country,” he said as he watched Bea celebrate her new relationship. “I strongly suggest Sammie does the same.”

Copyright: Helena Frith Powell 2008

I find myself in the Hotel Amour in the red light district of Paris. My room is called the Library room, the far wall is lined with French porn books and magazines. The remaining walls are painted black and the only piece of furniture in the room is a large double bed.

I have not run off for a dirty weekend with some porn-obsessed Frenchman. I am with Rupert who is writing a series of Paris hotel reviews for the Times. Today we leave our den of iniquity and head for a hotel without naked women on the walls.

Last night we ventured out into the surrounding red light district. As we walked past yet another sex shop Rupert commented that there is something deeply unsexy about sex shops. I agree. They are cheap looking, badly designed, badly lit and full of unsavory characters. In fact I don’t really understand the point of porn. In our hotel there are tasteful black and white photos of naked women on the walls as you go up the stairs. They look quite sexy. If they were pornographic they would not be. It’s like that old saying that using the feather is sexy, using the whole chicken is perverted.

Maybe it’s an age thing, but I was in no way tempted to go into any of the sex shops we saw, even the one that rather intriguingly offered to cater for lesbians, homosexuals and amateurs.

There is no doubt about which category I fall into.

Copyright: Helena Frith Powell

“Come to lunch,” he said. “My wife is away.”

Whereas when we last saw each other twenty years ago this might have been an invitation to spend the afternoon in bed, now that we’re middle-aged it was not my body Heathcliff was after, but my children. His wife being away he had to entertain his three somehow, and three children of a similar age sounded like a good idea.

So off we went with directions to his house, a few miles away from my mother’s. I won’t pretend I wasn’t nervous. I was. Heaven knows why. But seeing a man I last saw on my 21st birthday and was madly in love with for several years suddenly seemed very scary. A friend of mine said it was a stupid thing to do, that it would shatter my illusions and ruin the image of my first love. My mother said it was a good thing to do; dispel the myth once and for all (she never liked him).

I explained to the children who he was, how I was mad about him and that he never cared for me. “Why was he not in love with you?” asked Bea on the way there. “Weren’t you pretty enough? I think you’re very pretty with your long hair and bras with secret pockets.”

“Thank you darling,” I said, praying she wouldn’t mention the secret pockets to Heathcliff.

We arrived at his house and he came out to greet us. He looked, well, pretty good actually. Older,but really just the same. He was sweet, very welcoming, cooked home-made bolognese sauce as we gossiped about people we knew all those years ago.

I am sad to report though that Heathcliff showed about as much interest in me today as he did twenty years ago. In fact I don’t think he was any the wiser about me when we left at 5pm than he was when we showed up at 12.

The upside is he is mad about chocolate and is very good at making it. We tasted some truffles, they were divine. On the way home Olivia said she could still taste them.

His children were sweet. Rather gratifyingly his seven-year-old son fell in love with Olivia. What did she think of him?

“He’s far too ugly for me,” I heard her tell my mother. Revenge is even sweeter than a chocolate truffle.

Copyright: Helena Frith Powell 2007

When I was in London last I met Heathcliff’s wife. You may remember Heathcliff. He was the first love of my life and we were recently put in touch through a mutual friend. I have yet to see him again after more than 20 years but I have met the mother of his three children.

She happened to be having lunch in the same restaurant as the above-mentioned mutual friend and I. The friend, being rather mischievous, called her over and introduced us. He didn’t let on that I knew Heathcliff years ago and had been desperately in love with him.

So what did I think of this woman who ended up with the man I wasted more time dreaming about than I care to remember? It was slightly uncanny because she looked very similar to him; dark hair, fine features. She seemed rather cold, but attractive, and had a very deep sexy voice (rather like his). At one stage he called and they chatted like wives and husbands do. She called him darling and told him what train she’d be home on and not to forget someone’s gym kit. Just a normal domestic scene but I found it hard to grasp that that was Heathcliff on the phone being someone’s husband and father. To me I suppose he is still 19 and getting high in nightclubs.

Apparently his wife didn’t think much of me. “She was rather tartily dressed,” my source tells me she reported to Heathcliff. Tartily dressed indeed. I was wearing jeans, flat shoes (Tod’s, natch), a Sonia Rykiel strappy top and a Hobbs cardigan. Hardly play-boy bunny kit.

At first I was furious, but then I remembered that she’s meant to be a lesbian. So maybe tartily dressed is a good thing?

Meanwhile my youngest daughter Bea has me sussed. “This is mummy,” she announced this morning. “She goes to the shop and comes back with lots of bread which she puts in the freezer. Then she takes it out. But it’s too hard to eat so she feeds it to the ducks.”

Maybe I should stop by the river on the way home from the bakery; cut out the middleman?

Thank you all for your lovely comments and reviews as per yesterday’s blog. I hope that miserable onion is really bitter now s/he’s almost been pushed off the amazon page.

Copyright: Helena Frith Powell 2007

An article in the Daily Mail today tells us that men are now too scared to flatter women or to flirt with them. Apparently in our PC times a compliment is all too easily seen as an insult. So a ‘you look nice today’ can be miscontrued as either ‘I want to sleep with you’ or ‘you looked terrible yesterday’ or ‘I want to borrow your stapler/pen/hairbrush’.

When I was in London last week we had dinner with some friends at the Groucho Club in London (like you do). Towards the end of dinner I went to the loo. Walking in through the door of the restaurant bit as I walked out was a young man.

“I don’t mean to flirt or anything,” he said. “But you’re really very pretty.”

This comment didn’t make me want to call my lawyer, or my husband, or glare at the man with feminist rancour. No, it made me want to throw my arms around him. But as I concluded he was possibly myopic or deranged or drunk or in fact a combination of all three I resisted. But I floated back to our table and have to say I have only just stopped floating several days later. “I’m really very pretty,” I tell myself at least 100 times a day.

Why do women bother to wear make-up, curl their hair, buy lip gloss and go on diets if it’s not in part to make themselves attractive to men? (Obviously it’s mainly to irritate other women) And what exactly is so wrong with them noticing? If there are any men reading this; go forth and flirt immediately.

Copyright: Helena Frith Powell 2007

So it seems the Queen and I were in America at the same time. I wonder how different our visits have been. While I was recovering from a day of exhausting makeover treatments in my hotel room (actually I spent most of the evening trying to find a light-switch, why do they have to make things so complicated?) she was dining with the world’s most stupid person, sorry, president and a list of esteemed guests that included people like A. Jerrold Perenchio, chief executive, Chartwell Partners (who?) and other riveting A-list names like Joseph J O’Donnell, chief executive, Boston Culinary Group along with Clay Johnson III from the Office of Management and Budget. “Eat your oysters, Your Majesty,” he was probably telling her. “They were very expensive.” And just when you thought things couldn’t get any worse, Margaret Becket shows up.

The only person on this list of “dignitaries” I can imagine she would have been remotely excited about meeting at the state dinner was a certain Calvin Borel who won the 2007 Kentucky Derby. At least she would have known who he was, unlike me, when I sat next to champion jockey Richard Dunwoody and asked him if he’d ever ridden in the Grand National.

“I’ve won it three times,” he said.

Anyway, my point is this. You’d think with being Queen you might be allowed to invite whoever you want to dinner. There were no names on that list that I would have asked for. And several were glaringly absent. What fun is a dinner at the White House without Brad Pitt, for example, or Dr McDreamy, or George Clooney? About as much fun as a trip in Upper Class without a Colin Frith look-alike. Talking of which, I am writing this from Premium Economy. Of course had I been upgraded I would have been asleep by now…….

But the upside is that I am sitting next to a nice young man who was stood up by his girlfriend the night before they were meant to fly out to New York where he was planning to propose to her and take her to Tiffany’s to buy an engagement ring for thousands of dollars.

He had the whole thing arranged; a suite at the Waldorf Astoria, limo from the airport, romantic dinners, unlimited shopping budget. But she chucked him on the phone the night before they were due to leave after five years of being together. Being a sweetheart he took his niece instead.

If any of you are interested in a New York proposal, let me know and I’ll pass on your details to him.

Copyright: Helena Frith Powell 2007

It’s not often I am high at 8 o’clock in the morning, but our long journey home begins with a cab ride from Strawberry Hill to a small airport where we get a plane to Montego Bay to catch our Virgin (economy) flight.

The driver is a rasta and the cab smells very strongly of ganga. Actually it isn’t an unpleasant smell, much nicer than tobacco. The road is windy and so I take deep breaths so as not to throw up. Big mistake. We chat about love, life and religion. I love his attitude. He calls his girlfriend his “empress” and tells us never to fight with each other.

“Sex is the answer,” he says. “You have found freedom through love.”

I carry on breathing deeply and agree with everything. By the time we arrive I am more relaxed than a Jamaican on holiday. This is just as well as the next thing I know we’re hurtling through the sky in a tiny plane which lurches every time it hits a cloud and I can’t get my seatbelt to work.

Thankfully once in Montego Bay we head off for a relaxing lunch and final swim at Round Hill, a lovely spot founded by Mr Pringle. He recently died but his legacy lives on; they serve Pringles at the bar.

Back to Montego Bay airport for the nine-hour flight home in economy. By now the ganga has worn off and I am dreading it with the same intensity I dreaded childbirth.

“Why are you so late?” snaps the charmless person in charge of security.

“Because I was having lunch,” I feel like answering. In fact we’re there an hour and a half before take-off so I don’t know what he had to complain about. I’m the one that had to leave a coconut ice-cream half-eaten.

We check in and are told we have been upgraded to premium economy - yippee. Off we trot in better spirits. Once on the plane it seems there has been a classic bit of Jamaican confusion. We have been allocated seats that people are already sitting in. I have a hunch a miracle is about to take place and pray silently to Jah.

Sure enough. Premium Economy is full. There’s only one thing for it. Into Upper Class we go. As I sip my champagne I look around for a Colin Firth look-alike. Not one to be had sadly. Never mind, I am free through love and Jah is on my side.

Copyright: Helena Frith Powell 2007

It was one of those calls I’ll never forget. We were just finishing off lunch when my mobile phone rang. It was a UK mobile number. I wonder who this could be, I thought. But actually deep down I already knew.

“Hi Helena, its Heathcliff.”

We chatted for a while about where he lives, what he’s doing, how old his children are and then he mentioned that he sometimes thought about divorcing his wife. I didn’t like to ask more. The signal was bad so we said goodbye. I told him I will let him know next time I come to England so we can meet up.

But of course I had to know more so I asked our mutual friend. Apparently Heathcliff’s wife is a lesbian. Well, I suppose she wasn’t one when they got married, and they have several children so she’s had a few lapses, but she now makes a habit of spiking his drinks so that she can go out and meet girls. He has woken up several times in the middle of the night fully clothed in the garden. And when he’s stumbled into the house, she is nowhere to be seen.

Did he turn her into a lesbian I wonder? I asked my husband what he would do if he had married a lesbian. “All men marry lesbians,” was his rather enigmatic response, but then it was four o’clock in the morning.

Poor Heathcliff. The hero of my youth stuck with someone who would rather get into bed with his sister, or in fact anyone else’s.

Can I deny that a tiny part of me is rejoicing? That there’s just a minuscule little bit of me that’s saying ‘ha, you should have married me when you had the chance, I got over that lesbianism thing in my teens’. No I can’t.

But what should he do? I guess drink only bottled water from reliable sources, refuse the early morning cuppa or the evening aperitif. Maybe he should try the approach my son tried on me this morning as I refused to give him a piece of chocolate cake to go to school with and smear all over his classmates.

“You’re grounded,” he said shooting me an evil stare. Yes, that might just rein her in.

Copyright: Helena Frith Powell 2007