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Things I have discovered

16th August 2010 by Helena 4 Comments  

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.

Copyright: Helena Frith Powell 2010


Filed Under: Life, Travel Tagged With: discovered, things

4 thoughts on Things I have discovered

  • jacques says:
    16th August 2010 at 11:46 pm

    Apart from the occasional day-trip there, I’ve had 2 very different experiences of Wales: the 2nd and most recent with my son around 1990. We had splendid weather for the whole week (probably due to global warming) driving along the coast from Llandudno to Cardiff. We had a great time!
    The first experience was in 1962. I and a schoolmate, both 15, were staying with our penfriends (2 girls) near Birkenhead and we went on a long trip through Wales. Imagine the scene: a big Ford with 2 middle-aged persons and their 20-year-old son in the front, the 2 pen-friends and us in the back. 7 people in all plus the 2 Chihuahuas, Squash and Rue,trying to stay away from feet, all having a picnic in the car in the pouring rain, and trying to take the few roads that had not been barred due to flooding. Unforgettable!

  • Kate says:
    17th August 2010 at 1:07 am

    We spent every summer as children in Llanbedrog, just down the road from Abersoch and sailed in the regattas each August – fond memories. Enjoy!

  • Catherine says:
    17th August 2010 at 4:35 am

    This is a gorgeous area, and like Kate I have great memories of holidays throughout my childhood staying on a smallholding near Aberdaron just a few miles on from Abersoch. We would scramble down the cliffs to the beach (my dad carrying the obligatory 1970s windbreak!). I remember very few rainy days….. And that may not just be the mists of time playing jokes – a piece in the Guardian newspaper last week said “The sea is turquoise, the beaches sandy and, locals insist, the climate is milder and sunnier than most other places on the west coast of mainland Britain.”

    Thankfully the National Trust is hoping to protect this wonderful area, home to a fragile ecosystem and rare species, from “inappropriate development” by acquiring some of the coastline. I think they need to raise several million pounds. I will be making a donation, as a thank-you for those wonderful family times.

  • Cate Jumeirah says:
    18th August 2010 at 12:57 am

    I want to go to Wales. I want to go so badly. My OH was born in North Wales but left at the age of 3. Spoke Welsh before he spoke English. Went to uni at Aberystwyth, loved it, still speaks wistfully of the surrounding countryside and aren’t you somewhere near there? I love going to Wales since I’ve been married checking into hotels or booking something so I have to give my very obviously Welsh sounding surname. People melt on the spot, they react quite differently when they (wrongly) believe one of their own is around. I love it when OH comes out with his few faltering words of Welsh, which always stops the Welsh speakers dead in their tracks. You are so fortunate with the weather for it can rain for weeks on end even in the summer. My late mother-in-law was someone who would argue “why should I want to travel when I come from Snowdonia?” Some people might say she has a point.

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Helena Frith Powell was born in Sweden to a Swedish mother and Italian father, but grew up mainly in England. She is the author of eleven books, translated into several languages including Chinese and Russian. She wrote the French Mistress column The Sunday Times about life in France for several years. She is a regular contributor to the Daily Mail, Mail on Sunday, The Times, Daily Telegraph, Tatler Magazine and Harper’s Bazaar.

Helena has been the editor of four magazines, including M Magazine, a supplement for the Abu Dhabi-based National Newspaper and FIVE, a high-end fashion glossy, also published in Abu Dhabi. Helena was also editor-in-chief of 360 Life, a quarterly glossy magazine published with the Sports 360 Newspaper in Dubai, part of the Chalhoub Group.

Helena contributes regularly to UK-based newspapers and magazines and holds a Masters in Creative Writing from the University of Cambridge. She is working on a thriller set in Sweden as well as a novel about the relationship between Virginia Woolf and Katherine Mansfield called Sense of an Echo.

In 2022 her short story The Japanese Gardener came second in the Fish Publishing Short Story Prize. One of her stories was also shortlisted for the Bridport Short Story Prize. When she’s not writing, she works as a headhunter for the media and entertainment industry for the Sucherman Group. 

Helena, who was educated at Durham University, lives in the Languedoc region of France with her husband Rupert and their three children.

Bibliography

More France Please, we’re British; Gibson Square 2004

Two Lipsticks and a Lover 2005; Gibson Square (hardback)

All You Need to be Impossibly French; (US version of above) Penguin 2006

Two Lipsticks and a Lover; Arrow Books (paperback) 2007

Ciao Bella Gibson Square; (hardback) 2006

Ciao Bella Gibson Square; (paperback) 2007

So Chic! (French version of Two Lipsticks) Leduc Editions 2008 (also translated into Chinese, Russian and Thai)

More, More France; Gibson Square 2009

To Hell in High Heels; Arrow Books 2009 (also translated into Polish)

The Viva Mayr Diet; Harper Collins 2009

Love in a Warm Climate; Gibson Square 2011

The Ex-Factor; Gibson Square 2013

Smart Women Don’t Get Wrinkles; Gibson Square 2016

The Arnolfini Marriage; Amazon Kindle December 2016

Smart Women Don’t Get Wrinkles (paperback); Gibson Square spring 2018

The Longest Night; Gibson Square spring 2019

 

 

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