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Mad dogs and Englishmen….

25th May 2007 by Helena Leave a Comment  

This weekend is a long weekend in France. In fact, officially it’s not, the government cancelled the holiday on Monday two years ago but as is the norm here no one took a blind bit of notice and so everything is shut, including the schools. Even Chantal my childminder has gone away for the weekend. How selfish is that?

Not content with having three children to look after, I decide to invite a fourth to stay. Olivia’s school-friend Marguerite. Her parents are going away to help some elderly relation move, so I invite her here. So far it’s been fine. Apart from Bea deciding that tonight was a good time to try flying from the mezzanine in the spare room onto the bed. As I write they are all asleep in Olivia’s room, or at least pretending to be asleep.

Rupert took the news that we were going to have four children for three days calmly. His only worry was that we were going to have to “behave like French people”.

“How do they behave?” I asked.

“You know, putting our seatbelts on all the time, having a proper lunch, speaking French,buying baguettes for every meal.”

He also suggested that to make Marguerite’s stay more interesting (at least for us) we should adopt mad British customs like standing to attention and singing God Save the Queen before every meal. Obviously every meal should include baked beans.

Les chiens fous...

“Come on girls, time to get your kilts on and drink some warm beer,” he will announce every day at 3pm, as we prepare our bagpipes (not that we have any, I wonder if we can buy them on ebay?). I suggest we arrange a game of cricket and insist everyone wears whites and shrieks “howzat” every three minutes. Or maybe indulge in a bit of binge-drinking (us, not the children, though the way Bea behaves you might think she’d been at the bottle).

Whatever else, one great British custom will be upheld tomorrow. Rupert goes off at the crack of dawn to play in a golf tournament all day. I am left alone with four children, a fat cat and a charming but useless dog who is possibly the only dog in the world who literally does the school run. He runs after us on the bikes.

But I suppose I only have myself to blame. I always knew there was a reason I should have taken up golf.

Copyright: Helena Frith Powell 2007


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

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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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