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Good Housekeeping column – December 2011

27th May 2012 by Helena 4 Comments  

I have been writing a column for Good Housekeeping magazine here since December last year. Here is the first one.

This will be our fourth Christmas in Abu Dhabi, and I’m determined to get it right.
Last year we were almost there, but I fear the pink tree slightly
let us down. By the time I realised that you actually had to book a
month in advance for a real tree it was of course too late. We had
to make do with whatever was left at Lulu’s – a choice of gold or
pink. Pink it was; we haven’t gone totally native.
I feel increasingly stupid every year when I wake up somewhere in
mid-December and realise that Christmas is only a matter of days
away. I promise myself that next year I will do better. I will
become one of those annoying types who buy little gifts throughout the year and stash them away for the children’s stockings. And start freezing breadcrumbs for the bread sauce mid-October.
When I realise I have failed, yet again, I panic.
We have not made Christmas easy on ourselves. Quite apart from trying to meet people’s (read children’s) expectations when it comes
to presents, we have to cook an enormous lunch and decorate the house like a scene from A Christmas Carol. And because we have dragged our children away from their home countries, we feel
we have to do it all bigger and better than we ever did before.
In reality, no one is creating all this pressure, apart from our own slightly masochistic Christmas housewife alter-ego, who is silent all year round but surfaces with a vengeance over yule tide, like some shrill harpy, in coordinated red and green with ‘fun’ earrings.
By getting it right this year, I have decided I am going to ignore
her unhinged demands. I shall drag the pink Christmas tree out of
its box under the stairs (good recycling I’ll tell the family), put
on something black and elegant and take everyone for lunch at some gorgeous hotel on the beach. Let someone who is paid to do it make the bread sauce.
And with all the energy I have left over, I will drone on about the
true meaning of Christmas. That should shut them all up until it’s
all over again.

Copyright: Helena Frith Powell 2012


Filed Under: Women, blog -->, writing Tagged With: column, december, housekeeping

4 thoughts on Good Housekeeping column - December 2011

  • MWJ says:
    27th May 2012 at 7:03 pm

    I am one of those annoying types who buy little (and even big) gifts throughout the year and stash them away. However, this is a winner on so many fronts, I’m amazed everyone doesn’t do it. 1 it makes brilliant economic sense for you spread the cost of Christmas 2. you don’t have to worry yourself into a nervous breakdown on Christmas Eve over what to buy people for it’s all done and wrapped so you can just sit down with a glass of champagne and watch Love Actually or Holiday Inn and feel so smug and 3. you don’t have to set foot in a single shop in the run-up to Christmas so avoid both the crowds and that hideous Christmas music! (Surely that alone is worth giving some thought to Christmas presents …. in June!)

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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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