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A trip to the jungle

22nd May 2007 by Helena 6 Comments  

There were unidentified objects flying through the air, the heat was almost unbearable, the natives restless and noisy. This was before we even got off the coach.

A few weeks ago Olivia volunteered me as a ‘parent-in-charge’ for a school outing to an African Wildlife reserve called Sigean, about an hour from here. This is the sort of thing “good” mothers do all the time. There is one mother at the school who goes on every single outing. I met her today, and amazingly she seems quite normal .

Needless to say this was my first. Olivia must have sensed my reluctance (an hour on a coach with 60 children is probably not my idea of a great way to spend time). She clung on to my arm until we were safely on the coach and roaring down the motorway.

We arrived around 10.30 but then had to wait for half an hour due to some administrative mess-up. Once we were in the park there was an endless chorus of “I’m hungry” from almost every child. I was rather hoping some of the animals might be hungry too and bite someone so we could head off home early, but they were all very well behaved.

EthelOf the pre-lunch animals I would say the ostriches were the most amusing; they have a very balletic walk and a rather inquisitive gaze under their super-long eye-lashes. They reminded me of funny old ladies with fake eye-lashes.

At midday exactly everyone stopped walking and we sat down to eat. We are in France after all. Once we had eaten we were off again for more animal spotting: giraffe, zebra, impala, alligators (mean looking creatures), snakes, goats, parrots, lion, even a cheetah. But the most interesting thing to the children was the sight of two male ducks both trying to mate with a female duck. “Don’t try this at home children,” I wanted to say, but thought the French teachers might not get the joke.

It was stiflingly hot; the children started filling their baseball caps with water and putting them on their heads. Olivia insisted on a friend of hers carrying her. Luckily this friend is twice the size of her. I asked Bea why. “Because she eats soup and salad every day,” she told me.

The journey home was slightly more peaceful than the one there. Well it was for Bea and me. We slept most of the way while the other 59 children fought and sang and chatted. Bea had rather sweetly insisted on washing her hair that morning because “if I don’t, no one will want to sit next to me on the coach”. I hadn’t washed my hair as it now takes me the better part of a day to do so. So it was either a trip to Sigean or wash my hair, and being a good mother I opted for greasy hair.

“It was a bit boring,” was Olivia’s verdict, but secretly I think she liked it. She certainly liked having me there and was very sweet to me all day, even letting me me off my leash now and then. So all in all it was worth it. And luckily Bea didn’t notice that I hadn’t washed my hair.

Copyright: Helena Frith Powell 2007


Filed Under: Children, France, blog --> Tagged With: jungle

6 thoughts on A trip to the jungle

  • lady macleod says:
    22nd May 2007 at 10:32 pm

    good mommy!

  • Claire says:
    23rd May 2007 at 12:29 am

    “Good” mothers may volunteer every time but your child will probably forever recall mother’s stand alone outing and, if a single stand alone visit to McDonalds on the way back from dropping a grandparent to the train, is now, years later, recalled fondly by my children as something we did every time, then I guess it’s completely win/win!

  • aminah says:
    23rd May 2007 at 12:52 pm

    this mr Emu looks uncannily like the one down the road from Uzes…it’s some kind of farm but looks like a rubbish dump with Emu like the one in your photo, tiptoe-ing around the debris…

  • Amber Lee says:
    23rd May 2007 at 3:20 pm

    Honestly, your daughters say the most precious things.

  • alchesay says:
    24th May 2007 at 3:24 am

    strangely enough that emu looks very much like my great aunt, i really hope i become more like an old Brigitte Bardot, at her age than an emu.

  • Juliette says:
    5th June 2007 at 2:31 am

    I loved that zoo, we went on our last trip to France

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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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