After almost four months of constant sunshine the children and I were amazed this morning when we walked out of the house and got soaked. At first I assumed someone was washing the terrace, which would be an odd thing to do at 7.30 in the morning, but not as odd as rain in Abu Dhabi.

The whole city took on a new look, the drivers a new attitude; suddenly people were driving with care, in fact they were driving so carefully and slowly that we were late for school. Which by the way didn’t matter because so was everyone else and the courtyard was flooded.

The roads looked like oil slicks, we saw one yellow corvette (such a bad colour for a corvette) snake-slide its way up 19th street. In our sturdy Landcrusier we were fine. People might buy four-wheel drives here to take to the desert, but they are jolly useful too on the one rainy day of the year.

Actually it stopped after about an hour. The whole place smelt fresh and clean. It was lovely, like a spring day in England.

The other news is that Bea has written a blog she would like me to share with you. So here it is.  It seems I can happily retire.

mummy
i love our
message you
sent me i love it
so much it is so nice
i hant to send you a blog
about my future that you cod
put on youse but if its not god delete
it i don’t fink it was not very god but please
iven if you don’t like it please do the carection’s

my blog .
one day olivia ask me if i can lend her my laptop
i sayd  her yes .
but the ader day i ask her to lend me her book and
she told me only if you lend me our laptop and i told her
NO because all the time i ned her to lend me her staf
she told NO only if you lend me our laptop thats the end of my blog.
Copyright: Helena Frith Powell 2008

When a certain Martin Rynja founder and owner of Gibson Square publishing first wrote to me suggesting I write a book about my life in France I assumed he was a vanity publisher. I had spent most of my adult life trying to get a book published without any success, so was amazed to have a real publisher contact me.

I first met Martin at a cafe in Liverpool Street station. We discussed the book deal and signed a contract soon afterwards at a restaurant in Harrods. He is a perfect gentleman; clever, witty, imaginative and harder working than any other publisher I have worked with.

Little did I know at the time his reputation for taking on topics that others shun. I was horrified to read this week that his house was fire-bombed because he agreed to publish a fictional account of Mohammed’s first wife Aisha (which Random House decided not to, although they loved the novel). Martin is fine and in good spirits. He emailed me asking if I had a spare front door. The publishing of the book, however, is on hold.

I find this a very sad state of affairs. Although living where I do I am more sensitive to the issues surrounding Islam than many back home, I still find it tragic that free speech, opinion and fiction is supressed in this violent manner. And as the author herself says, she is extremely positive about the Prophet. In fact most of the hate mail she recieves is from people calling her a supporter of terrorism.

I hope this is not a sign of how things are to be in the future. British publishing has a great and proud tradition of independence and courage. Although if it were my home being bombed I suppose I would do what any normal person would and scrap my plans to bring the book out. 

Martin’s list includes several other books larger publishers deemed too hot to handle such as Blowing up Russia: the secret plot to bring back KGB terror; House of Bush, House of Saud; OJ Simpson’s If I did it and, er, Two Lipsticks and a Lover, one of many books he has bravely published by Helena Frith Powell when all others refused to. She is eternally grateful.

Copyright: Helena Frith Powell 2008

Tomorrow I leave this delightful haven that is the Viva Mayr clinic. I think everyone should come here, at least once. I have discovered several important things about my health that will change my life.

First the reason I have always had a pot belly is not because I am built that way but that I have an inflamed small intestine. So my tummy has swollen up to protect it, just like your arm would swell if you fell over and bashed it. The good news is, it should be gone within two weeks. So if I am allowed to wear a bikini on the beach in Abu Dhabi, I will be doing so. Second my doctor has told me that due to my body’s reaction to stress (throwing calcium at it to reduce acid levels) I will almost certainly develop osteoporosis unless I start taking supplements (and avoiding stress). This is particularly emotive for me as my mother suffers from the disease. Finally (and also linked to stress) I am exhausted and have to allocate one hour a day to myself, along with one day a week and FOUR WEEKS a year - this is going to be the most difficult thing to do.

I don’t feel exhausted, I feel great. I have been working hard but also enjoying massages, saunas (to prepare me for Abu Dhabi) and lots of reading. I am almost at the end of A Thousand Splendid Suns which has been a huge international best-seller. It’s a really lovely book, totally gripping and a great if horrible insight into the plight of women in Afghanistan.

I have been trying to define it. It is not great literature, nor is it pure chick-lit. But somewhere in between. I would say, and this is no way a criticism, it is chick-lit for grown-ups. It is compulsive reading, the characters are well drawn but I think one of the differences between this and say F.Scott Fitzgerald is that here we are told things and with Fitzgerald we are shown them. There is a scene in The Great Gatsby where he describes Daisy Buchanan and Jordan Baker sitting on a large comfortable sofa, their white clothes being gently lifted by the wind, the view from the window and the billowing gauze curtains. In that paragraph he tells us more about the characters and their world than any passage that is purely descriptive.

Talking of chick-lit, a spa would make a great setting for a chick-lit novel. Maybe my next one could be set here with a cast of characters including: The attractive and successful female City executive deafened by the sound of her biological clock, looking for someone, anyone, to silence it. The gruff owner of a Premier League football club and his wife who share the exclusive suite at the top of the clinic, but what goes on up there? The brooding Spaniard, a man who seemingly has everything, but who is riddled with sorrow. The aristocratic playboy with a dark childhood secret…..I could go on. A good excuse to come back next year.

Copyright: Helena Frith Powell 2008

Alexander Solzhenitzyn, the Russian Nobel laureate and former prisoner of Stalin’s gulags, has died in Moscow aged 89. I can’t pretend to have read any of his books, but I have at least heard of them and I am aware of what a huge impact he made exposing the cruelty of the gulag system despite harassment from the KGB and then eventually twenty years in exile.

Sarkozy (keen to get on on the act) has called him “an heir to Dostoyevsky”. The letters on the BBC website all talk about how he changed people’s lives, what an inspiration he was and one even says that A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich showed him the power of literature to change the world. Solzhi, as he was known by friends in his adopted America, would probably agree. One amazing fact I read this morning is that in the gulag they were allowed neither pens nor paper, so he memorised everything and kept it in his head until he was free to write it all down.

I think every writer secretly dreams about changing the world, either with a huge scoop or with a great book. But maybe at slightly different levels and obviously linked to your circumstances. Were I living in Afghanistan, for example, I like to think I would write a book that would help the plight of women there. But as I’m not I am quite happy helping women in my world lose weight, discover matching underwear and feel better about themselves. Possibly not as ground-breaking or as important as Solzhi’s epic work, but it suits me.

Copyright: Helena Frith Powell 2008

I received an email a few days ago I would like to share with you….

Bonjour, I happened to meet your famous book “Two Lipsticks and a Lover”. It gives me great happiness. It was fascinating and made me flap my hands. I had lived in France for over 10 years, from 1990. As a foreigner and mother of French children, your book encourages me to ask your permission. I would like to translate your book in Korean language. Looking forward to having your favourable reply, I extend my best respects.

The thought of Two Lipsticks-reading Koreans flapping their hands is too charming and so of course I am going to give her the go-ahead.

When did you last ”meet” a book that made you want to flap your hands and what was it? For me it was Suite Francaise by Irene Nemirovsky. I am on the look-out for good books to meet and take with me on our Grand Tour, so any suggestions are welcome.

Copyright: Helena Frith Powell 2008

Today is the publication date of To Hell in High Heels. When my first book came out I was close to bursting with excitement by the time it came out. I counted the days, rather like a child counts the days to his birthday. The same went for the second and the third.

But what I have found with books is that, rather like birthdays, you get all excited about them, but nothing actually changes.

Today will pass much like any other day. Leo will wake up soon and start bossing me about. I will take the children to school where my friend Mary and I will discuss how badly we slept, whether Madonna should be wearing latex underwear aged 50 and grumble about the weather. I will come home and work. Then I will collect the children for lunch, listen to their stories from school, take them back to school and so on. Today will pass just like any other normal school and work day.

Unless of course you ALL go out and buy the book. In which case I may be famous by this time tomorrow. In fact you don’t even have to go out. You can order it from amazon. I am going to have my hair done after the school run just in case.

Copyright: Helena Frith Powell 2008

When I was a little girl dreaming of becoming a journalist I would look at my stepfather’s Sunday Times and wonder if one day I might be good enough to write for it. It seemed an unobtainable aim, but I imagined reporting from trouble-spots around the world, one of the bravest and best foreign correspondents the Sunday Times had ever known.

As some of you may know, I do write for the Sunday Times, I have a column about living in France called The French Mistress. But this weekend there was a special surprise for me. On page two there is a list their top writers in the Sunday Times with pictures. There among the likes of Michael Portillo, Christina Lamb and Marie Colvin was moi. So it’s official, I am a top writer. I was terribly excited by this, despite the fact that while Lamb was reporting from Zimbabwe and Colvin’s dispatch came from Basra I was writing about, er, Botox.

But do not underestimate the dangers of botox, get it wrong and your eyebrows droop. Not a good look. Even Mugabe is unlikely to do that to you.

Obviously next week I’ll be reporting on matching underwear from Afghanistan.

Copyright: Helena Frith Powell 2008

There are worse places to spend a morning. I am at the Grand Hotel in Florence. My room looks out over the city and the Arno River. Inside it is almost more impressive. There are frescoes on three walls depicting romantic scenes from too long ago to even contemplate. The colours are faded reds, yellows and blues. The scenes unmistably Florentine. My bed has a regal structure over it which makes me feel like something out of a fairy-tale every time I look at it. There is a plush red velvet chair that is so deep, large and comfortable that I am tempted to stay in it for the rest of the week.

I am here for The 7 Arts (the head-hunters I work for) Christmas party. This is one of the advantages of having a proper job as well as writing. You get to see how people who have not spent most of their adult lives trying to be writers live.

Talking of trying to be a writer, I am reading a most brilliant and inspirational book called The Paris Review Interviews (Vol I). It is interviews with literary luminaries such as Truman Capote, Ernest Hemingway, Rebecca West and Dorothy Parker. I read last night that Capote was a horizontal writer. He always wrote lying down. Hemingway on the other hand preferred to stand up in his oversized slippers in front of a bookcase which he wrote on. This is obviously where I have been going wrong. Sitting down at my desk is not going to get me anywhere.

Happily as my adaptor plug doesn’t work properly I am writing this crouching on the floor with one foot pressed against the plug. Does that count do you think? Later on I may try penning a chapter or two while swinging from the wrought iron chandelier. That’s clearly what it’s there for.

Copyright: Helena Frith Powell 2007

As I sat reading my story in the Daily Telegraph this morning (see www.telegraph.co.uk) and seeing my book plugged at the end it occurred to me that humans are essentially dissatisfied creatures.

“I have just realised how lucky we are,” I said to Rupert. “We could have moved here and ended up in total oblivion.”

Five years ago a big spread in the Telegraph and a book published by the Random House Group was all I could dream about. Now that I have all that of course I want the Booker prize and a weekly column in most, if not all, newspapers. As well as my own TV show.

Is this a good or a bad thing? Is constant striving what creates progress? Even if it makes us dissatisfied as well? I think it probably is a good thing. If Shakespeare had just thought ‘oh well, I’ve written a couple of plays now and I think I’ll retire’ the world would be a less interesting place. Leonardo da Vinci could justifiably have stopped half-way through his career and still achieved more than most of the rest of the world put together.

I am not in any way comparing myself to those two greats, but what I am saying is that even if ambition can make you seem spoiled at times I think it’s fundamentally useful.

Sometimes though, it would be nice to be just content. On Sunday we took all the children to a park. Leo was with his best friend Louis. He was carrying a rugby ball, Louis was carrying a football. The park was full of slides and swings.

“Oh look Louis!” gasped Leo. “We’ve got everything what we need.”

“Yes Leo,” smiled Louis. “We have.”

At times it is useful to put ambition aside and realise how lucky you are. Especially now that England are in the final of the rugby world cup. But of course I now want them to win. By a large margin. And there was a time I would have been grateful just to beat the Aussies. See what I mean?

Copyright: Helena Frith Powell 2007

With his famous book, the Age of Reason, published in 1795 Thomas Paine confirmed a new age; the age of enlightenment. If Thomas Paine were to write a book today he would probably call it The Age of Stupidity.

In it he would chart the relentless rise of reality TV, talk about hoodies taking over the streets of Britain and the celebrity culture that has gripped the inhabitants of this once proud and intelligent island.

I don’t know when it finally dawned on me that we have entered an age of stupidity - maybe I was a bit dim not to work it out sooner - but a number of cumulating factors have led me to this conclusion. Take this example. What do you suppose is Britain’s best-selling autobiography? Ghandi’s perhaps? Or Winston Churchill’s account of how he saved Britain - and the world - from Nazism? Nelson Mandela’s Long Walk to Freedom? Wrong. It is the account of how a woman tripled her breast size and thus endeared herself to a nation. Yes, Jordan’s is the fastest-selling autobiography in British publishing history.

Being Jordan and Jordan: A Whole New World have sold almost 1.2 million copies in the UK over the past five years. Churchill’s has sold just over 5,000. I looked at one of her autobiographies in a book shop once, just to see what all the fuss was about. I no longer remember which one, but it all started with a cat-fight and the unforgettable line, er actually I’ve forgotten, but it was something along the lines of ‘don’t you come creeping up to me you bitch, I know what the f*** you’ve been saying behind my back.’

Truly gripping stuff. I see her novel is in the best-seller list too.

So I am now faced with a dilemma. When I was in London last I had a life-changing moment. A publisher approached me at a party and said; “I think you should write a novel.” This to me was the equivalent of someone telling the England rugby team they are going to beat France on Saturday. Ever since I was little girl I have wanted to (and tried to) write novels. So once I have sent off the edited To Hell in High Heels on Monday, I will begin to realise this life-long ambition.

The dilemma is, do I write something I want to write or something I think will sell in this Age of Stupidity? Am I prepared to dumb down? No is the answer of course. But I shall probably remain a penniless writer while Jordan sips pink champagne before breakfast and has her numerous pools cleaned by Jonny Wilkinson look-alikes.

Perhaps I am the one being truly stupid, retaining a normal breast-size and trying to write relatively good books?

Copyright: Helena Frith Powell 2007