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Overcome with lust?

21st January 2007 by Helena 3 Comments  

It is Sunday morning and we are in Uzès for the 14th annual truffle fest. This is a magical place, a medieval town in the hills about half an hour from Avignon. As usually happens when we travel anywhere in the direction of Provence I have decided I want to move here immediately. We arrived yesterday to bright sunshine and a bustling Saturday market. We had a lovely lunch at a restaurant called Terroir, while the market took place all around us. The restaurant is run by Tom who is an even weirder mixture than me; half Belgian and half Swedish but speaks perfect English.

Today the truffle fest will involve watching dogs and pigs hunt truffles in the main square, a truffle-cooking competition and a lecture on how to eat them by the resident truffle expert.

Last night however it involved a dinner. This started at eight o’clock and by half past eleven we still had two courses to go. As you can imagine all the courses involved truffles.

Am I the only person in the world who finds big dinners extremely tedious? I invariably get a type of claustrophobia brought on by the feeling of being trapped there for at least another three hours. On my left was a Swiss man who went into great details about the pros and cons of various Swiss ski resorts I have never heard of (really wasted on me as I only ski under duress). To my right was my best French friend Alex, so that was good. The seating plan was curious. There were three women on the table and the host put us next to each other. The third woman was his wife who, despite being a wine-maker, doesn’t touch alcohol. If I found the evening dull, she must have been practically sleep-walking.

Truffles are supposed to inspire lust. According to the gastronome Brillat-Savarin, it is impossible to remain faithful after eating them. I mentioned this to Alex who looked around the room and said. “Not in this place.” I don’t know if it was the effect of the truffles or plain boredom but I tried to snog Rupert between courses who said: “Stop that you fool, I’m your husband.”

At 1am we stumbled upstairs to our rooms to find our children still awake. Maybe we should have dragged them down to the dinner; they wouldn’t have liked the truffles but at least the conversation would have been entertaining.

I hope it’s not truffles for breakfast.

Copyright: Helena Friith Powell 2007


Filed Under: Children, France, Languedoc, blog --> Tagged With: overcome

3 thoughts on Overcome with lust?

  • IRENE says:
    25th January 2007 at 3:25 pm

    Uzes…My best friend in my teens was French and came from Uzes and now lives near Avignon. Lovely part of the world. lol about the “I want to move here” feeling!
    I love mushrooms, and truffles are glorious to the palate, but I don’t thing I could do the full dinner! Brave girl!

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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. Helena is working on a thriller called Thin Ice that will be published in 2021 as well as a novel about the relationship between Virginia Woolf and Katherine Mansfield called Sense of an Echo.

Her latest non-fiction work Smart Women Don’t Get Wrinkles came out in hardback in 2016 and in paperback in April 2018.

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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