A novel approach to the school uniform

helena — Wed, 08 Sep 2010 10:25:25 +0000

On Monday school starts for all three children. The little two are going to go to a sweet little primary school here in Abu Dhabi called The Pearl, and Olivia, who starts ‘big’ school is off to Repton in Dubai.

Repton is an English school and Olivia will be a boarder. As with all things English, such as seeing Waitrose washing-up liquid in Spinneys supermarket here or walking into M&S, this makes me feel terribly secure for some reason. I don’t mean the boarding, but the Englishness of it.

Olivia will have to wear a school uniform. A few days ago I sent over the uniform list and pictures to my mother for Olivia to see them. She is still in Italy, avoiding the desert heat until the last possible moment.

I called her to see what she thought. “Well,” she began. “I like the blazer and the sweatshirt, but I will NOT be wearing that shirt, or those long socks.”

I did explain to her that a uniform is not something one wears on a voluntary basis. She was amazed. And kept on complaining about the shoes.

So Sunday night she and I (and nasty shoes) travel up to Dubai so we can be at school at 8am the following morning. I am really excited and so is she. I never really felt at home with the French system.

I remember my step-father when I was about 18 berating me for being middle-class. “I can just see you, when you’re grown-up and married, in your middle-class home, with your middle-class husband, sending your middle-class children off to boarding school,” he shouted.

Even when I was 18 I saw nothing at all wrong with that scenario….

Ageing not strictly neccessary

helena — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 15:32:09 +0000

Today I wore leopard-print skinny jeans (Top Shop, to die for), leopard-print shoes and scarf. And a white shirt.

“You still have the courage to wear leopard print?” asked a male colleague of a similar age to me.

“He thinks I’m too old to wear leopard-print,” I told another colleague as he left the room.

“Just ignore him,” she said.

“Maybe I am too old to wear leopard print.”

“Too old? With those legs? Don’t be silly.”

Last week in London my friend Annika and I behaved like teenagers, getting drunk and giggling. This week Demi Moore, who is even older than I am, posted pictures of herself on Twitter in her bathroom wearing nothing but skimpy underwear.

I have decided that ageing is not compulsory and that I am going to ignore it for the moment. I will not be posting semi-naked pictures of myself on Twitter or even Facebook. But I will wear my leopard-print skinny jeans for a while to come….

Let the train take the strain

helena — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 17:06:01 +0000

Tomorrow we head back to Abu Dhabi. We have had the most wonderful time and have decided that one of the most civilized things in the world is the European rail network.

We have travelled from Zurich to Arosa to Paris to London to Wales back to London then Eurostar (heaven) to Paris then down to Sainte Cecile and then up to our friends Norrie and Mary’s in the Savoie and then back to Zurich – all on the train. Thousands of miles, all on time, in sparkling clean trains that whizzed through beautiful countryside.

I hope I am not speaking too soon and the final train we catch (tomorrow morning) to Zurich Airport will not be the exception. I suppose the upside would be that we could stay and get the train back to Norrie and Mary’s.

In a previous blog I quoted Rupert as saying that his grandmother always stayed in the best hotel in town and, as a result, died penniless. I have been informed that she did not die penniless at all. Which just increases my admiration for her. That she managed to live as she wanted and still have money left over at the end confirms that she was a great example to us all. Kitty if you’re listening – we are in the best hotel in town and drinking champagne in your memory.

Return to Sainte Cecile

helena — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 14:49:31 +0000

We have been home for a week and are getting ready to leave again. I am not quite sure what to think. Part of me wants to sort out the whole house, unpack all the boxes and just never ever leave again and yet part of me thinks ‘thank God we don’t live here any more’. It’s all very confusing.

Of course it is the most beautiful house in the world, with views to soothe your soul and walks that you never tire of. And coming back this time I really felt at home, the house and garden look lovely and everything is so familiar.

It is amazing that despite the burglary most of our things seem just the same. Rupert pumped up Leo’s bike and off he went as if he had never been away. What was really lovely was how happy the older children (Hugo and Julia) were to be here. It made us think that if we can possibly avoid selling it we should. It is like Howard’s End, but with less rain, a place where they will come to heal broken hearts, get married and nurture their children.

But there is always something TO DO. In Abu Dhabi I can quite happily spend the weekend planning my afternoon kips. Here I am planning how to get as much as possible done in the least possible time. Twas ever thus.

But it has been really lovely. It has been great to see people, to have lunches and dinners by the source and on the terrace and to be reunited with such essentials as Leo’s integrated Atlas with CD, Olivia’s teddy’s jumpers and my curling tongs. The children were also reunited with ‘Mami’ Chantal and ‘Papi’ Gilbert – my old childminder and her husband who have looked after Olivia since she was one and the other two since birth. The girls had their friends over and at one stage with all the kids in the pool, it was like a thousand other weekends.

Now there is no more time to rifle through boxes I realise that by the time we come back again the children will have grown out of all their old clothes. And either I will have done (got to get back to that gym as soon as we get home) or the mice will have eaten them.

Sainte Cecile is now not ours again until the end of 2011. I hope as little has changed here when we next come back. And that I can stay a little longer so I don’t feel I have to do stuff all the time. Maybe I can persuade our ‘bonne’ Schamanee to come along with us.

Sainte Cecile with a maid, now that really could be as close to heaven as I could imagine….

Things I have discovered

helena — Mon, 16 Aug 2010 19:26:44 +0000

It was Shakespeare who said that no traveller returns, meaning that when you go away you come back a different person. We are now well into our holiday and I have learned a few things about myself and life in general.

I have learned that I want to live in a country where the waiters have summer houses. At dinner in Paris the other night we were served by a charming waiter aged around 50 who had a summer house in the Var. I felt this was a sign of a civilised country.

Rupert’s grandmother Kitty said one should always stay in the best hotel in town. I would say that you should never stay in a hotel where you don’t want to steal the bathroom products.

Finally I have discovered that Wales is a very nice place. This is my first visit here and I know that the weather (constant sunshine) has been extremely unusual, but we have liked it so much we may come back next year. I think this has more to do with the friends we are staying with though than the weather, however good it has been.

Three in the morning stress

helena — Fri, 13 Aug 2010 01:25:09 +0000

I suppose if you have to be awake at 3am there are worse places to be. I am sitting on a rooftop terrace in Paris with an (albeit limited) view of the Eiffel Tower. Our hotel room is a tiny attic room at the rather oddly named Hotel Wo on the rue de Stockholm close to the Gare St Lazare. I feel like a character in La Boheme. My tiny hand is frozen, even though it is summer. We are almost a week into our holiday.

The Swiss Alps were perfect – totally glorious. If you ever have some (serious) money to spare then go and stay at the Tschuggen Grand Hotel in Arosa. We were there writing a travel piece for the paper and I cannot think of a more charming way to spend four days. I think I even slept through the night at least twice.

This nighttime waking is nothing new of course. But isn’t it extraordinary how annoying it is and the stupid things you lie awake worrying about.

Just now I was worrying about, in no particular order;
how I am going to lose the two kilos I have inexplicably gained since leaving Abu Dhabi
how we will make it to the Eurostar and then on to Wales all in one piece with all our luggage (including Leo’s scooter) intact
how the girls are getting on with my mother, or rather how my mother is coping with their endless energy
why they didn’t eat the sophisticated cheeses my father tells me my aunt was offering them, insisting instead on eating supermarket cheese – is this a terrible defect?
what to wear tomorrow (today)
where to live if we ever leave Abu Dhabi
will I have more snotty emails and calls from the (only) summer tenants we have at Sainte Cecile – it seems the house is rebelling against their presence and keeps shutting down the electricity and/or water supply at regular intervals
if my husband will ever stop snoring
is my book is good enough
will I ever finish it

So it was much better to come out here and enjoy the beautiful view. Amazing how chilly it is. And how peaceful without the sound of my brain whirring. Now I just need some gloves.

Holiday time

helena — Sat, 07 Aug 2010 17:02:43 +0000

Tonight we head off to Europe. All being well this time tomorrow we will be in the Swiss Alps at the Tschuggen Hotel where we spend four nights (working hard on a travel piece) followed by Paris, London, Abersoch (it’s in Wales), then home to Sainte Cecile for a week and finally the Savoie to our friends Norrie and Mary. My mother will bring the girls to Sainte Cecile for a reunion.

I will be relaxing, sleeping, eating and drinking. But also trying to do some work on the book for which we have a cover…..what do you think? Leo and Bea are both concerned with her headless state. Nothing wrong with headless I say, that’s how I spend most of my days…..

Newspaper Football

helena — Mon, 02 Aug 2010 08:09:10 +0000

I am having a nice time hanging out with Leo, while the girls are away in Italy visiting Roman ruins and avoiding my aunt.

Hanging out with Leo means not only learning to love the Beautiful Game. It means learning to live, breathe, dream, think and talk football; all the time.

At the weekend I was trying to watch the box set of ‘Mistresses’. This is the kind of useless thing you can do when you are gainfully employed and have someone else to do the ironing. I made the excuse that it was ‘research’ for my book, and actually it did give me some good ideas. Anyway, Leo was keen to play football. So I decided to combine the two. We came up with a game called ‘Newspaper Football’ whereby I sat with a folded up copy of the FT in front of me and he had to score a goal by hitting it. My job was to protect my goal and watch the TV at the same time.

Then there are the conversations we have. “Mummy, was I born when Zola left Chelsea?” he asked the other day. Thank goodness for the Internet. The answer by the way is 2003.

As I write Leo is at a football camp. Yesterday was his first day. It is in a dome-like construction but searingly hot. He still refused to take his Chelsea shirt off, insisting on wearing the camp T-shirt over the top of it.

We head off on holiday on Saturday. I am hoping we will find some outlets for his football fetish in Geneva, Paris and London. I love the fact that he is so mad about something. If not, there’s always Newspaper Football.

Update on the girls

helena — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 10:44:01 +0000

Much has happened. The girls went off to Italy to stay with my mother. Then they went to Croatia with my aunt. What happened between then and their week-early return yesterday is a little hazy. But according to my aunt they refused to speak to anyone and spoke only in Swedish to each other, thus ensuring no one else had the first clue of what was going on. They tell me my aunt was rude about “our family”, even questioning my ability to cook Spaghetti Carbonara. Imagine that….

They are now back with my mother (mormor) and jolly happy they are too, as you will see from baby Bea’s latest email:

Hej hej, mormor is very happy and she says she enjoys much more having us here then us beeing at piera’s and yesturday mormor said we could look at her postcards and in the middle of them i saw a pretty little book written Menu on and i said hey mormor look at this and then she said we could write the menu on some other paper and put it in the book because the paper in the book was hand made so that’s why today we are having a whole day of restaurant. Oh that must of been fun did everybody eat it ?
We also went to go and eat Pizza yesturday olivia got pizza with ham i don’t know what mormor got and i got the pizza with nothing inside and with rosmary i think it is on top. then we went to see the film we played in the park and we left mormor alone but if we wanted water we went and said can we please have water after when it was nearly finishe the film the man was talking so i ran to the park and i tripped on a rock and went flying then i hit my leg on something like the side thing on the sidewalk and then i got blud and a broose it really hurts when we got home mormor put cream on it and the cream was really cold but it was my fault because i shouldn’t of been running to the park that was silly. And mama on the boat it was going really fast and it was bumping around and water came on the windows the lights were moving it was so scary and while i was on it my legs would shake every second i wouldn’t stop and plus it was very cold and very hard to fall asleep im gonna stop writting now because my message is gonna blow
Lots of love bea
xxxx

Summer is here

helena — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 10:40:28 +0000

I may be accused of writing a spurious blog about the summer just so that I can post this picture of Rafa that a kind-hearted work contact sent me yesterday.

I deny this accusation. Summer is a very interesting topic and should be written about often, and at great length.

As Henry James said: “Summer afternoon – summer afternoon; to me those have always been the two most beautiful words in the English language.”

If you live in Abu Dhabi, then this Samuel Taylor Coleridge quote is perhaps more apt: “Summer has set in with its usual severity.”

Unless of course you happen to be on a beach with Rafa….