So the international conspiracy to keep me awake goes on. The perpetrators will stop at nothing. Now they have a gang of highly-trained mice that at 5.30am every morning scuttle back and forth across the roof. It sounds like there are 50 of them racing to get to a big piece of Emmental.

Of course that hour when the rest of the house sleeps (damn them) is horribly lonely. I lie there worrying about everything and anything. This morning I worried about my new spa retreat. ‘What on earth do I know about spa retreats?’ I asked myself as the mice reached the finishing line. ‘Who do I think I am? I have been to plenty of spas, but what the hell do I know?’

Unable to get back to sleep I got out of bed and into the tree pose. This is one of the poses our spa yogi Anna taught us on our dry-run a few days ago. Since then I have found it indispensable. First and foremost when you need calming down this is ideal. Got an email that makes you want to punch your computer? Stand up, lift one leg and balance against the other leg just below your groin. Stretch your arms up and breeeaaaaathe. Stand like this for a few seconds before doing the same on the other side. After that sit down and the email will seem irrelevant. The other thing the tree pose is excellent for is calming the children down.

Yesterday all three of them decided to start a fight (thankfully only with each other) in the supermarket. Did I yell and holler like every other mother in the middle of the school holidays? Nooooo. I did the tree pose. Right there, in the middle of the shop-floor. It sure as hell shut the children up.

So as I was standing there at 5.45 this morning in said tree pose I realised that my spa has already been a success. Among other things I have learnt how to relax when I most need to, I have learnt that eating Wild Alaskan Salmon makes my skin glow and I have learnt how to walk like a supermodel. And that was just after a day and a half. Now what I want to do is share all this and more with other women.

The other good thing about the spa retreat is that there will be no mice there to keep me awake. And even if the international conspiracy comes up with something else, I will be able to outwit it by standing on one leg and breathing serenely.

Copyright: Helena Frith Powell 2008

I have just had my first meeting in French. It was a lunch in an Italian restaurant in St Germain with the French publisher of Two Lipsticks and a Lover and the hottest publicist in Paris, hired by the publisher to promote the book.

I was of course terrified. First of all what do you wear to a meeting with two Parisian women? Then there was the question of if I could make myself understood in French or if they would laugh at my pronunciation and non-existant grammar.

My publisher, called Karine, was sweet as you like. Young, pretty, kind, charming, attentive. The publicist was just like one of those perfect French women I write about in the book. She was thin, elegant, dressed in black with perfect red lipstick. I suddenly felt dowdy, although she was kind enough to notice that my top was Emporio Armani (handed down from my aunt in the days when she used to speak to me) and told me I was “tres elegante“.

This did put me at ease to a certain extent, but did not detract from the fact that she was scarily reminiscent of Meryl Streep in The Devil wears Prada. I am sure she is the hottest publicist in Paris, who would dare to say no to her? Not me, that’s for sure. I expected her to say “that’s all” at any moment and dismiss me.

So here I am on the train bound for home with Elle, Marie-Claire, Liberation and Le Monde to read. And I have promised to speak French to my children.

“If you can’t express yourself in March when the book comes out it will be a catastrophe,” she told me.

The reading list I can cope with, but can you imagine the derison from my children as I tell them to pick up their toys or do their homework in French? They will be able to disobey me constantly, telling me they didn’t understand what I was saying. So no change there.

After my good cop, bad cop encounter I had a photo session. I stood on busy Parisian shopping streets, craning my neck to see what bargains I was missing out on, as a photographer took pictures of me for the book jacket. So another fantasy (that of being a model) has become reality - not a bad start to the year.

Copyright: Helena Frith Powell 2008

As Hillary Clinton gets bitter in a televised TV debate with Barack Obama, the singer Amy Winehouse is frolicking on a beach in the Caribbean with her ex-boyfriend. Who do you think does more to further the cause of women?

Most would probably say Hillary. She was (and some may say still is) likely to become the first ever female president of the US. She strides around making important speeches and leaves men quaking in her wake. Amy, on the other hand, is a drug addict lunatic with a husband in jail and more tattoos than David Beckham.

My view is that women like Hillary do more damage to women’s causes than men do. She has become worse than a man. She is more aggressive, more strident and totally charmless. Just because you’re in a position of power, there’s no need to give up being a warm and attractive (even sexy) person. Her husband certainly didn’t. Here in France we saw a similar change (although not nearly as bad) in Segolene Royal. In the end Sarko outpolled her among women, as Obama has just done to Hillary in the US.

Amy may be flawed and faithless. But she is pure woman. She is talented and successful and behaving badly. In her song You Know I’m No Good she says “Upstairs in bed with my ex boy, he’s in a place but I can’t get joy”. This may all have changed now.

But the point is that women are not fooled by a woman trying to be a man. That’s not what we want when we talk about the first female president. We want a first WOMAN president, not some pastiche of a man whom we hate on sight. If Hillary were a touch more like Amy (or even Bill) we would like her a lot more, chinks and all.

Copyright: Helena Frith Powell 2008

“Are you a goer?” I overheard a man asking at a party the other evening. The man posing the question was my husband. The person he was addressing was my friend and business partner Mary. I agree that with her tight red dress and hair curly as kale she was looking particularly festive, but I did wonder if this question were appropriate. My normal response would have been to flirt outrageously with the best-looking man in the room, but as our kind hosts were gay, all the good-looking men were looking for equally good-looking men, and not wasting so much as a glance in my direction. I resolved to ask Rupert about this comment on the way home.

“I heard you ask Mary if she was a goer?”

“Yes,” he said.

“I know it looks bad. But there is a perfectly good explanation. I was explaining to her my theory of parties. Parties are made up of two kinds of people: those who want to go home early and those who want to stay late. The problem is, they are normally married to each other, which leads to aggravation. So what I wanted to know from Mary was this: are you a stayer or are you a goer?”

Hmm. Neat explanation. Or perhaps I am getting very French in my suspicions. Here we are all agog at the news of the liaison between Carla Bruni and Sarko. She clearly is a goer. When she decided that she must have Raphael Enthoven, a philosopher, it was of little concern to her that a) he was married and b) she, Carla, was living with Raphael’s father at the time. Along with the usual conquests such as Mick Jagger (while he was married to Jerry Hall) and Eric Clapton, she also dated Francois Fillon, the French prime minister. This is probably not the first occasion that the French president and prime minister have shared the same squeeze, but it’s definitely the first time that the French public have been made aware of it. While we haven’t been at too many parties this season – Rupert and I shared an office lunch - no streamers, no dancing, very little snogging – we have been invited to Christmas Eve with our wine-making friends Jean-Claude and Alexandra in their chateau. Nervous as we are about the police and their breathalysers, I phoned Jean-Claude to ask him what time we should book a taxi for.

I was already quite nervous about this: according to one friend, the French go first to Midnight Mass, then party on afterwards. As a girl who likes to be in bed by ten o’clock at the latest, this is disheartening news. Jean-Claude suggested various times for the taxi, then said:

“It’s all too complicated. You must stay.”

So, it’s official. Rupert and I are both stayers. Although he points out that perhaps it is possible to be a goer and a stayer. I will question him further on this issue. In the meantime Merry Christmas!

I am pleased to annouce that I am incredibly posh. The reason I know this is that none of my friends have central heating. It is a well known fact that the posher you are, the colder your home is. In fact one of the friends I stayed with in London during this visit didn’t even have hot water, so she must be almost royal. Last night I was unable to sleep because my nose was so cold. I’m all for getting into the seasonal swing and all that but do I need to look like Rudolf?

I am now on the train on my way back to France. My final Christmas party was the Daily Mail one. I met Shere Hite there, author of the famous Hite Report on Female Sexuality. I had always imagined she would be rather academic and serious. Not a bit of it. She made Joan Collins look natural.

She had obviously had a lot of work done. At a guess I would say at least one face-lift, lots of lip implants and botox. She looked insane. She looked scary. She looked older than her 65 years. I suppose the rest of us should be grateful to her. Not only because she talked openly and loudly about the importance of the female orgasm, way back in 1976, but because she is a prime example of a truly terrible approach to ageing.

Copyright: Helena Frith Powell 2007