I’m in the money

Posted on March 21, 2011 by Helena

Well, not really, but for the first time since I started this blog in November 2006 someone has paid to advertise on it. And I still have to set up the PayPal account to actually get the money, but I feel this is a bit of a breakthrough.

Rupes will be most impressed. he has been complaining that the books and the blog are a “luxury”, because they don’t really make any money. The other day he showed me a brilliant cartoon from the New Yorker with a man telling his agent he wants to write a book.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” says the agent. “If you really want $800 that badly, I’ll just give it to you.”

I think though that for books (and the blog) money is not really the point. I am already thinking about the next novel, in fact I have started it, and I am thinking about characters, plot-lines, themes, names and so on. The one thing I am not thinking about is money. Or lack of it.

I have also been given a bit of a helping hand with the new novel as my first love showed up in Abu Dhabi this week. Regular blog readers will know him as Heathcliff. I first met him when I was a teenager and was madly in love with him (unrequited, nach) for too many years. Obviously this theme has been done before, look at the hugely successful novel One Day, for example or Turgenev’s novella First Love. But as my father says: “There is nothing original since God said ‘let there be light’”. So watch this space.

Am looking for a good title if anyone has any ideas, just don’t expect to be paid….

Money, money, money

Posted on April 25, 2010 by Helena

I have decided that the point of being rich is not how many designer handbags you can buy, although of course that is a perk, but that it makes your life much easier in many ways.

If you are rich, you can employ someone to do all those things that make your life tedious, like deleting the spam comments on your blog, or getting the internet connection at home fixed, or organising your annual car insurance or calling the plumber.

This may not be a mind-blowing revelation, but I have come to realise that we may never be able to leave Abu Dhabi because to a much lesser extent we have that here.

As I write my driver is collecting the home entertainment system box we have had mended. My housemaid or ‘bonne‘ as the French rather more charmingly call them, is buying vegetables in the supermarket to cook our lunch with. I am at work, relaxed and zen, even though it is press day.

The thought of going back to a life where it was just me doing all that stuff is horrible. I just can’t imagine it. In fact it’s a miracle I am as well-balanced as I am after 25 years of ironing.

My mother finally arrived this morning after a week’s delay thanks to the unpronounceable volcano. It is so lovely to see her. I just called to see if they are all OK.

“We can’t do anything right now, because we are playing luxury hotels and Mormor (granny in Swedish) is playing with us and is going to have a luxury suite,” Olivia told me.

So you see, we don’t need to be rich at all, we have everything we could possible need anyway.

Money not so funny

Posted on September 25, 2009 by Helena

Am I the only person out there who isn’t saving any money? A financial advisor came to see me the other day and suggested we put away some cash every month for our future. “Even if it’s only 500 pounds a month”.
Only 500 pounds?? I almost fell off my chair. We’d be lucky to have 5 pounds a month left over. So I started to try to work out where we could cut corners.

leo and piano
As I write Leo is learning to play the piano. We spend hundreds of pounds a year on their “activities” which include golf, tennis, ballet, musical theatre, football and guitar. The music lessons are by far the most expensive. So far all Leo really does is play Old McDonald had a farm over and over and over again. But I’m sure things will improve.
Playing the piano is one the things I always wish I could do. In fact in England I even started having lessons. I never got to the giddy heights of Old McDo but I loved it.
So what else? Well, there are life’s little luxuries like Laura Mercier Primer, matching underwear and manicures. Can I do without them? No, obviously not. What about Rupert’s golf lessons? Those we can definitely do without, he’s good enough at golf. If he gets too good at he’ll beat his boss, then he’ll never get a pay rise and we’ll never start saving.
Copyright: Helena Frith Powell 2009