So the international conspiracy to keep me awake has now reached ridiculous proportions. I leave the hotel room next to the mosque to move into my friend Amanda’s flat while she is away. But now instead of the mosque I have the combination of four cats and the insomniacs on the 9th floor to keep me entertained.

I have realised that the only sleep I can hope for is before 1.30 am, when cats and insomniacs are at their most active. This has been going on for days. This morning at 3 I finally decide to write a note, not to the cats, to the insomniacs. In said note I ask them politely if they could perhaps be a little more considerate as they keep waking the children up (total lie of course, they have slept remarkably well). I decide to deliver the note immediately. Problem is I am wearing a pink and yellow nightie and all my clothes are in Amanda’s bedroom and I don’t want to risk waking the babes. So I find a raincoat, put that on and take the lift up to the 9th floor.

It does occur to me en route that if anyone sees me barefoot, in a nightie and a raincoat carrying a note written in pink at 3am, they might well call the men in white coats. But at least at the asylum in my sound-proof cell I would get a good night’s sleep.

Meanwhile I tried to phone the sheikh’s property man as arranged, about 100 times. His phone was switched off. It doesn’t look like my happy ever after is happening. But right now I’d be content with a few hours sleep.

Copyright: Helena Frith Powell 2008

Remind me to avoid Geneva airport in the future. Coming back from a meeting about an exciting new book deal in London (which I will tell you all about once it is signed) I flew into the scene of my handbag abduction episode. When I parked that morning (at 6am so I was a little bleary-eyed) I opted for the unlimited car park. I carefully wrote down Red 17 so that I would be able to find my car again.

I trudge towards the car park in my pink heels which after a day in London are hurting like hell. It is odd, I think to myself, that when I arrived the car park seemed so close, and now it seems so far away. I finally get there, heave a hugh sigh of relief and put the ticket in the machine. “Your ticket is not valid in this car park” it tells me. I look at my ticket. Unlimited Car Park number 1 it says. I am in unlimited car park number 51. This could explain it.

So I trudge back, swearing at my own idiocy, unaware that this episode is totally minor compared with the self-inflicted suffering I am about to come up with.

It is now ten to nine. I landed at 8.20 pm. I have an hour and a half drive ahead of me. The children are waiting up to say goodnight. I am about to throw my shoes away they hurt so much. To say I am keen to get home is an understatement.

I finally get back to the right car park and put my ticket in. It won’t let me pay with a card and I root around my newly-found handbag for any Swiss francs in a total blind panic before I realise the machine takes euros. Phew. I find Red 17 without any further mishaps and sink thankfully into my car. I set Titty (the GPS navigator) to my beloved Blanchiniere and plug in my phone. Ready to go!

Now all I need is the car parking ticket. It has vanished. Much like my handbag days before, it has been abducted. I literally turn everything upside down. I even crawl under the car, cursing and shouting at myself. I am in total disbelief. It HAS to be here. But it’s not. So I look for the office of the car park, there is none. I decide to drive to the exit and explain what has happened.

But when I get there and the man asks me where my ticket is I am just too ashamed to tell the truth, to tell him (even if he is hidden inside a machine) that I have no idea, that somewhere between paying for it and getting to my car I lost it. He’d think I am a fool, which I am, but why should he know that? So I lie. I cross my fingers and tell him the machine ate it. I get very Italian and shout about the machine. And the fact that my handbag was stolen last time I was here, and that I just WANT TO GO HOME. Eventually he releases me. I blow kisses to the invisible man in the machine and head for the motorway.

At home the children are asleep but Rupert is waiting with candles and a glass of red wine. I am so relieved to be there I almost weep. On Wednesday we go back to Geneva Airport to drop Bea off. I think I might stay in the car.

Copyright: Helena Frith Powell 2008

It was all going swimmingly. We’d had lunch in Geneva, got soaked under the fountain on the lake (it was a boiling hot day) and got to the airport in good time to drop Olivia off for her flight to Italy where she is going to stay with my mother for three weeks.

“Watch out for pickpockets,” read a sign as we walked in. I warned Olivia to keep a close eye on her new Nintendo DS, I know she would be heartbroken if she lost it.
After check-in we went upstairs for a coffee. We sat down and I started to write out a list of people Olivia needs to write thank you letters to for her birthday presents. Suddenly I felt something like a chill wind behind me and it was gone…..

My beautiful handbag. I stood up and shouted, I ran around looking feverishly for some man with a green Birkin bag, the Swiss around went about their business calmly, probably assuming I was a lunatic.

If only we hadn’t gone to that cafe, if only I had put all our passports in the glove compartment as I’d meant to, if only I’d been using my Montegrappa pen instead of leaving it “safely” in my bag. And the worst of it is my nine lip-glosses and Gucci prescription sunglasses. I hope the little shit who stole my bag puts them on and falls in Lake Geneva.
But you know what, despite it all, all I could think of as I gave the police my statement was ‘thank God it wasn’t one of the children’. Olivia is on her way to Rome and the other two are asleep in the back.

“I’m sorry you lost your handbag and your beautiful pink pen,” said Bea before she fell asleep. “But at least you have your phone and your laptop.”
And I have them. And Rupes. And my Jerome Gruet hat (I’m not daft enough to put that in my handbag) and an excuse to buy a new handbag, obviously.

Copyright: Helena Frith Powell 2008

There are few things that make me as angry as the situation in Zimbabwe. I read this morning that 60 or so women and children have been removed from the opposition party headquarters for “hygiene reasons”. They were hiding there for fear of beatings, arrest or worse. Meanwhile Morgan Tsvangirai has taken refuge in the Dutch embassy following the announcement that he has pulled out of the election on the grounds that it will be a non-election.

He is right. Not only will it be a non-election, it will cause huge suffering, as we have seen already. Thousands of people have been beaten and harassed. More than 200,000 have lost their homes. Food aid has been snatched and distributed to supporters of Mugabe. A run-off would have amplified these problems and ended with more deaths and beatings. Mugabe will stop at nothing to keep his grip on power, to continue to destroy what was once one of the most prosperous and happy countries in Africa.

What amazes and angers me almost as much as Mugabe (and by the way, is total dictatorship the secret to not ageing? How young does he look? Or has he had a series of clones produced that he controls with a remote?) is the fact that no one seems willing or able to speak out against him. I suppose nothing the “imperialist west” does will make any difference, although maybe cancelling the upcoming cricket tour would annoy him. But his African neighbours ought to do something, especially South Africa. Why the silence? Do they really want a crippled Zimbabwe on their doorstep? Or are they too scared of being rounded up for hygiene reasons to speak out?

Copyright: Helena Frith Powell 2008

What the hell is Robert Mugabe doing at the World Food Summit in Rome? This man belongs in jail, not at some international convention. Added to which the irony could hardly be more poignant. He has sytematically starved his people for years. So while he dines in the Via Veneto, his people die of hunger. As one journalist put it, it’s rather like inviting Pol Pot to a human rights convention.

I know a journalise who went to Zim recently. He interviewed a woman who was beaten repeatedly in front of her two children so badly that the Daily Mail judged the pictures too gory to publish. Her crime? Voting for the opposition. I cannot bear to think about the suffering going on there now before the electoral run-off at the end of the month. And yet western leaders welcome this tyrant, this dictator, this despot in Rome. Why didn’t Berlusconi (who loves attention) refuse to give him a visa? Why doesn’t someone shoot him? Mugabe that is, not Berlusconi. He at least is only starving his people of decent television.

Closer to home there is also worrying news. Today Rupert goes in to hospital to have his knee operated on. It is a simple operation, but any operation is worrying. Although possibly not as worrying as his reaction to shaving said knee in preparation for keyhole surgery.

“I can see what you girls are on,” he said, looking rather pleased with the results. I have left him in the capable hands of a friend who will take him to hospital as I whiz up to Paris for my style guru event. If only the talk were about men I could announce the new shaved knee look. As it is, I will have to come up with something else.

Copyright: Helena Frith Powell 2008

I admit it, I am a fattist. Every time I see a fat person I want to throw up. I can’t stand the sight of that blubber blubbering around. If I see a fat person walking into Burger King I am tempted to make a citizen’s arrest.

Now I see that Britain is officially the fattest nation in Europe with a shocking 59% of women judged overweight or obese. This is more than half the female population. What the hell are they thinking about? Chips and deep-fried Mars Bars? Obviously not their health or how to look good in skinny jeans.

OK, so I may care more than the average person about the way people look. But It’s not just the fact that I hate the idea of someone with so little will-power or care for themselves that they let themselves get into that state. There is the deadly serious side to obesity.

Do you know that being overweight knocks NINE YEARS off a person’s life? And how much is the medical care going to cost? And who pays for that?
We don’t mind looking after smokers on the NHS, after all they fund a large part of it, but how are you going to feel when you realise that a vast amount of your hard-earned money is going on treating people for this obesity epidemic? Reinforced beds don’t come cheap. Nor does the medical care to treat cardiovascular diseases, cancer, diabetes, arthritis and a whole host of other effects of stuffing your face at every given opportunity. And before you all start writing telling me for most fat people it’s a medical condition, I sat next to two extremely experienced doctors at lunch yesterday and asked them how many people were fat due to a medical condtion. The both shook their heads.

“Hardly any at all,” said one, “the most common medical condition would be a mental disorder that leads to over-eating. Other than that it’s simply life-style. And eating too much.”

But being obese is no longer a personal lifestyle choice, it’s an issue we’re all going to have to deal with. And look at. And while I’m ranting; a friend of mine used to extremely thin, not through any eating disorder, she was just thin. People would often come up to her (even strangers in the street) and ask “do you ever eat?” How come you’re allowed to ask that of thin people but were you to ask a fat person if they ever stopped eating you would be judged incredibly rude?

Maybe it’s time we started asking them that question, it might make them stop and think before they stuff in that deep-fried Mars Bar.

Copyright: Helena Frith Powell 2008

I am ill. I have a temperature, a very sore throat and I ache everywhere, mainly in what feels like my kidneys but I can’t be sure. I hate being ill and am not a good patient. I am short-tempered, grumpy and feel terribly sorry for myself. To make matters worse the cat jumped on me at 5am so instead of sleeping through until maybe 8, I have to suffer another three hours of this ghastly virus.

I had an email from a retired Brigadier about the column in Sunday’s Sunday Times. It cheered me up enormously. I told the Brigadier (retired) that he had made me laugh on an otherwise pretty miserable day. I told him I was going to toast him with a glass of rose and hope that banished the illness. This was his response:

Vin Rosé. Non. My second in command Col Aylmer Bulstrode caught the virus whilst we were attending to the drains in Aden. The cure is to take to your bed, preferably a four poster. Place a top hat or something similar on the footpost, lie down clutching an opened bottle of whisky and imbibe regularly until you appear to see two hats. Then slumber, when you awake the virus will be gone and you merely have to cope with a monstrous hang over.

Fortuitously I have a four-poster bed. Now I just need to find a hat and some whisky. I may be some time…..

Copyright: Helena Frith Powell 2007

I have arrived in the Savoie with a faulty outlook express. This means I can’t open any emails. This is the sort of thing that makes me so angry I want to throw my laptop at the nearest mountain, but instead I am going to try to stay zen and focus on things I like instead of the one thing that I really, really DON’T like which is my laptop ruining my life.

So here is my list:

Gazing at my son
Sleeping for eight hours in a row
Singing along to bad pop songs with my daughters
Clean sheets
Doing sun salutes by the pool with my husband
Getting on a train with my laptop (until we fell out)
Listening to Bea sing
Hitting a good forehand (even better would be a good backhand but it is unlikely)
The smell of wood burning
Writing
My father’s voice
Children after a long cleansing bath with wet hair
Reading my children Swedish books I knew as a child
Walking, especially at night or late evening
Sitting by the pool with a glass of chilled wine and some fresh almonds in the evening sun
Gossiping with my mother
Sleeping in the afternoon
Finishing an article in the New York Review of Books (or even starting one)
A day when I don’t have to go anywhere

Copyright: Helena Frith Powell 2007

Below is a review that someone has written about Two Lipsticks and a Lover. I am appalled by it and can only assume this is a frustrated and angry (read unpublished) author in disguise or someone with an unexplained loathing for half-Italian women who live in France. Janine di Giovanni by the way is a heroic journalist who covers the most horrifying war zones and has written several books about them.

Please could those of you who have enjoyed Two Lipsticks click on this link and write a review? I just can’t have this unfair tirade as the only opinion on my book.

And remind me to put onions on my list of pet hates…..

je ne pense pas, 19 Jun 2007 By onion (London, UK) - See all my reviews gosh I think this book must have got published by mistake. Sloppy, cliched, misogynistic, and deeply deeply tedious. I’m not sure what it is about the French that seems to bring out the crapness in journalists but this is a great example (see also Janine di Giovanni etc etc)

In the film Amelie, each character is introduced with a list of what they hate and what they like. As I reversed the car up the drive today it occurred to me that the things we hate remain pretty much the same throughout our lives. For instance, ever since I could drive I have hated reversing and I have hated parking. This is now as likely to change as my ability to do either is.

Other pet hates include:

Letters from the bank (even if I have some money in my account they make me nervous)

Peeling tomatoes

Anything under my nails

Trousers that are too tight

Sore feet

Policemen looking at me (99.9% of the time I am totally innocent, but I feel guilty as hell)

Being late

Missing the beginning of a film or a play

Discussing commuting options at dinner parties

Anchovies

People opening my newspaper before I’ve had a chance to read it

Doors slamming

Hair in the wrong places

Broken nails

Being too cold

Being woken up

And last, but not least, lice. (I am pleased to report that the situation is now under control. I feel rather like Maggie during the Falkland’s War, although my enemy is possibly more dangerous and certainly closer to home. Thank you all for your suggestions.)

I will work on a list of likes for the near future. Starting with driving forwards.

Copyright: Helena Frith Powell 2007