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A moving experience

25th October 2010 by Helena 1 Comment  

Last time we moved, and I mean really moved, as opposed to leaving Sainte Cecile with a car full of belongings, I was eight months’ pregnant. Rupert had already gone on ahead to France to “prepare” the new house and I was left with Olivia to pack up our entire home.
Olivia, as you might imagine, was not much use. Aged just over one, her overriding interest was in getting in and out of the boxes I was trying to fill. It is a time of my life I prefer to forget, along with my night in Stoke Newington jail and being pick-pocketed at Victoria coach station (unrelated but unpleasant events).
Two weeks ago we moved house here in Abu Dhabi. At 9am on Friday morning (the day of the move) a team of seven men showed up to pack all our belongings. By 10pm on Saturday most of them were unpacked and in more or less the right place. I spent most of the time telling the removal men where to put things and meeting the neighbours.
Of course it was not totally stress-free; I lost my hairbrush, for example. Quelle horreur. But I didn’t unpack a single kitchen appliance, or even a glass wrapped in newspaper, which has to be a good thing.

The new house is lovely, a proper family villa, with a rent that, though astronomical, is low enough that we can live without lodgers. The house is in a small compound of ten villas, with a cobbled road up the middle, where the kids play endlessly. The other families have children too, some of whom mine have met before, so it has all worked out perfectly. Well, apart from one incident where Leo cycled straight out of the compound onto the main road without looking and could have been crushed by oncoming traffic. Thankfully he wasn’t, and there really isn’t much oncoming traffic, but he has been banned from the bike for a week.
I am not saying I want to move on a regular basis, but I am happy we did and that I have discovered that, when done properly, moving doesn’t have to be, as the saying goes, one of the three most stressful things in life, along with death and divorce.

Copyright: Helena Frith Powell 2010


Filed Under: Abu Dhabi, Children, Family, blog --> Tagged With: experience, moving

One thought on A moving experience

  • Patricia Rodriguez says:
    26th October 2010 at 10:04 pm

    I am so happy for you Helena. I usually end up with a nervous breakdown or two when I move…mostly when I can’t find the box with the French wine 😉

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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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