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Our poor house

10th October 2009 by Helena 4 Comments  

Sainte Cecile was burgled yesterday. I got the news from a friend in the village and felt like weeping. The children were even more upset than I was.

“You have to remember it is only things,” I told Olivia, trying to keep calm. “It is not a person.”

She looked horrified.

“Sainte Cecile is like a person to us,” she told me.

saintececile

She is right of course. The thought of someone breaking in through the kitchen door, rummaging through our belongings and then eventually opting to steal the television before leaving is horrible. A stranger marching through the house, fiddling with things, breaking things, looking for anything of value is very upsetting. We all feel protective about our home and love it like a family member, which is only natural as it has been part of our lives for so many years. Even if I did hatch a callous plan to sell it earlier this year and move to the Savoie.
From here we also feel totally unable to do anything and cannot even ascertain what is missing apart from the flat-screen TV. One of my first thoughts was ‘I hope they didn’t find my UGGs’ – how sad is that? But I didn’t really feel I could ask my mother-in-law who kindly went to assess the damage to see if they were missing.

Meanwhile it has given the children more fodder for their ‘let’s go back home’ campaign.

Copyright: Helena Frith Powell 2009


Filed Under: France, Pet hates, Sainte Cecile, blog --> Tagged With: house

4 thoughts on Our poor house

  • Cate Jumeirah says:
    10th October 2009 at 10:04 am

    Oh, Helena, I am so, so sorry. It isn’t just possessions having been taken, as you rightly say it’s your home having been violated and I really do feel for you. We were burgled in England – there wasn’t anything in the house (it was between lets) so they took every last thing they could find in the garden instead including very valuable statues and old terracotta pots that my mother had bought in the ’50s. Fully insured and possibly replaceable, I still wept when I learnt of it.

    And it happens so often in Italy to isolated holiday homes, i ladri turn up with vans and literally empty the entire house including taps, light fittings and, yes, even the kitchen sink.

    But, that said, don’t berate yourselves by saying it wouldn’t have happened had you been there – friends of mine were burgled earlier in the summer in the English countryside whilst they were sitting having supper downstairs in the kitchen!

    No matter where you live these days, it comes with the territory. Thank goodness your mother-in-law lives close by, you’re very fortunate. But why not use it as an excuse to maybe pop back for a few days just to reassure yourself everything else is OK?

  • jose says:
    11th October 2009 at 9:09 am

    Poor Sainte Cecile was feeling neglected and wanted some TLC.
    Hold her tight and say you’ll be back for Xmas (?) and the house
    in Savoie was just a joke. What better way to get attention than
    to be ‘violated’? She looked pretty lonely to me in the photo.

  • Stephanie says:
    11th October 2009 at 6:40 pm

    I’m sorry to hear this happened. It must be hard not being there to see what they went through, but I too am glad it is only things and that everyone is safe.

  • mimi says:
    11th October 2009 at 11:07 pm

    Helena, I’m sorry to hear that.
    It’s a horrible feeling, and must be much harder being so far away.

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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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