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How to snare a man

25th July 2007 by Helena 11 Comments  

I am happily installed in the Hotel Alla Noce in Limone, a town on Lake Garda. I am here to finish my next book and have chosen this place due to a gene they have that means they live longer. Apparently ten per cent of the population is between 100 and 110 years old.

So far I have seen no old people or evidence of longevity. What they seem to have though is a control freak gene. Staying at the hotel is a little like boarding school. You can’t eat here, you can’t put your feet there, you can’t sit at that table, you can only eat breakfast inside and so on. Maybe it is their control freak nature that keeps them young, in which case I am going to live to 150.

Click here to purchaseGood news from a reader in England. She was recently divorced but has found a new man, in part thanks to one of my books. “I think Two Lipsticks & A Lover helped me snare him actually,” she writes. They are now going to move, with her young daughter, to Provence where they will spend the winters; I assume investigating her matching underwear.

It was lovely to get such a nice letter. The past week I have had a lot of hate mail due to the latest Sunday Times column. Even from someone called Reginald. Actually the bitterness of his letter was offset by the joy I felt at the fact that there still are people called Reginald alive and kicking. Maybe he has the famous Limone gene?

Copyright: Helena Frith Powell 2007


Filed Under: Books, Women, ageing, blog --> Tagged With: snare

11 thoughts on How to snare a man

  • Jonathan Miller says:
    25th July 2007 at 9:11 am

    The Swiss are sinister. I should get out if I were you…

  • Rupert says:
    25th July 2007 at 9:29 am

    Good to see Miller showing his legendary sense of geography. That will be Italy…

  • Jonathan Miller says:
    25th July 2007 at 12:46 pm

    Oddly, my map shows at least half the lake is in Switzerland – so the caution stands. She should be careful of the sinister Swiss, even if she is on the Italian side of the lake. They are undoubtedly watching her, even as I type.

  • Wendy says:
    25th July 2007 at 12:54 pm

    This was the article about buying property on an island near Stockholm? what was wrong with it? considering what you’ve said about the amount of rain I thought you were pretty upbeat about it…. all apart from the last two lines.
    Personally I can’t stand the non-stop rose tinted spectacles articles where someone is just ‘perfect’ – nowhere is perfect.
    … am very happy to read any of your articles.
    My sister is in Lake Garda right now too – keep an eye open for her. Her name is Linda and she’s from Leicester!!

  • snusmormor says:
    25th July 2007 at 6:09 pm

    Well, funnily enough Jonathan, even the Italians living up there are considered sinister and more “foreign” by the real Italians anyway, especially by proper southerners!

  • Jacqueline Bucar says:
    25th July 2007 at 7:37 pm

    For us poor souls on the other side of the Atlantic, what article in the Sunday Times? Actually I check your website’s links to all the newspapers and sometimes write comments but those articles are mostly from 2006 so I suspect the last Sunday Times article is not on our site? So I can’t defend you!How do fans in the “new world” keep on top of your latest column in any newspapers?

  • snusmormor says:
    25th July 2007 at 8:28 pm

    I think it was this one:
    http://property.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/property/overseas/article2063758.ece

  • Jacqueline Bucar says:
    26th July 2007 at 3:03 am

    Thanks for the site. I read the article and it was terrific. Don’t people have a sense of humor any more? or appreciate satire? Of course I’m jealous as I get ready for another day at the office tomorrow! Does anyone know how I can get either a notice of one of Helena’s aricles or do I just go on line and check every Sunday? Thanks again,Jacqui

  • helena says:
    30th July 2007 at 11:02 am

    Hello Jacqueline
    I have updated the Sunday Times articles so you should have pretty much have everything there, and I promise to keep them linked to this site.
    Hx

  • Jacqueline Bucar says:
    1st August 2007 at 7:34 pm

    Thanks Helena but I don’t know how to access those Sunday Times articles. I click on the Sunday Times at the top of the website and there are just the same titles as always (I’ve read them all). The archives on the side are all the same as before too so I’m not sure what you mean when you said you updated them all and now I can read them. Sorry to be such a Luddite but I do look forward to reading your columns or anything you write for that matter.
    Jacqueline

  • helena says:
    2nd August 2007 at 6:40 am

    Hi again Jacqueline
    If you click on French Mistress (that’s the name of my column)within Sunday Times you will get all the columns, sorry I should have explained.
    Best
    Hx

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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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