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Practical dressing

11th February 2007 by Helena 3 Comments  

RoquebrunWe’ve had a lovely weekend. Yesterday wandering around IKEA (a rather strange Swedish habit) and Montpellier. Montpellier is a fantastic city; it always seems to be sunny and there is lots to do. The only glitch was trying to visit the newly re-vamped Musee Fabre. The region has spent four years and around £50 million doing it up, but sadly didn’t get the computers working so the queue was longer than the one we endured to get through Miami airport in December. What’s wrong with a system where you pay your money, they give you a ticket and you move on? It works for the Louvre. Needless to say we gave up waiting and left. Olivia started weeping. Amazing – I have seen children weep at the thought of going into a museum, but never not going into one.

Today we visited the idyllic village of Roquebrun about half an hour from home where they hold an annual Mimosa fete. This involves lots of people wearing Mimosa and buying things from homely-looking stalls. On the way home we stop for a walk and come across some cows and horses roaming around a vineyard which the children immediately want to bring home.

My husband and I agree that on a scale of lovely weekends this one is right up there. The children were sweet, the sun was shining and IKEA even had Dill-flavoured crisps. There is only one problem: my feet. I don’t know why I insist on wearing high-heeled boots at all times. They are certainly not the most practical things to wear while stomping over fields, especially as at one stage I had to leap over a ditch to avoid a cow who was, as Bea put “looking quite grumpy.”

“It’s only an old cow,” laughed my husband. Like he would never try to avoid something looking grumpy with two great big horns pointing in his general direction?

I have just received an email from my old friend Kilks. She tells me she wears pyjamas at all times. “I think they are very clever the way they can be worn at night, through into the morning and school run, through cups of tea and very important site meetings with builders, through lunch and then afternoon pick up – no point changing for tea as will just get childrens food all over clothes – then may as well keep them on for bath time and story time through into my supper time – then before you know it it is bed time again – practical dressing I call it.”

I might have to try it, slippers have got to be better than five-inch suede boots when it comes to escaping random farm animals.

Copyright: Helena Frith Powell 2007


Filed Under: Children, Family, Languedoc, Style, blog --> Tagged With: dressing, practical

3 thoughts on Practical dressing

  • spymum says:
    12th February 2007 at 3:29 pm

    I think your friend is definitely on to something there! Especially as one could collect a nice little wardrobe of pyjamas, Toast (for the trendy), Cath Kidson (for the girly whimsicals) The White House (for linen purists) and even good old Boden!

    But wild horses (or cows!) will never drag me from my high heeled boots!

  • helena says:
    12th February 2007 at 5:43 pm

    I think Cath Kidson and high heels might be quite a good look, especially with your favourite Posh Mums – you may have started a trend!

  • Louise says:
    14th February 2007 at 9:56 am

    I may be going off at a tangent here, but if you want to see some truly odd and inappropriate dressing, there is no better source than http://gofugyourself.typepad.com/

    I spent a good half hour this morning, sitting in my Cath Kidston (note that spelling) cowboy pyjamas, sniggering over the Gwen Stefani section, instead of writing about French property hot spots (snore). Check it out.

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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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