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Settling in well….

17th May 2013 by Helena Leave a Comment  

“Would you be angry if I covered a lacrosse pitch with loo paper?”This slightly leading beginning to an email was sent to Rupert yesterday, and alerted us to the fact that Bea had been up to mischief at school.
The girls have settled in enormously well. I have not had a single word of complaint, well at least not from them. They have made fabulous new friends, are loving their studies and just to complete their integration have now both been gated before they even got to half term.0603561616
Olivia put spot cream on someone’s toothbrush and Bea, along with 11 others in her year, for some reason decided that the lacrosse pitch would benefit from a carpet made of loo roll. This jolly jape was carried out at midnight as the rest of the school slumbered.
Both incidents are like something out of Malory Towers and I refuse to get angry about either. In fact I think that if they are up to (slight) mischief it’s quite a good sign. As my lovely Swedish grandfather Erik would have said: “You don’t want your children to be BORING do you?” I was also extremely pleased to hear from the school that “all 12 girls involved in the incident are saying it was a group effort and that no one person took the lead”. One of the best lessons one learns from an English public school is not to be a sneak.
So far, sending them to school has been a great decision. As it gets unbearably hot here, they are running around the countryside. Olivia is in the tennis team and has her first match tomorrow. Bea scored five and a half rounders yesterday and whenever I try to call Leo his phone goes on to answer machine. I finally got hold of him a couple of nights ago and asked him where he’d been for five days. “Outside,” he replied.DTCP_15_04_13_Frith-Powell_01.jpg
So far Leo has not been gated. He is too busy taking wickets, or playing with his new friends Hector and Harry (am now slightly wishing I had called him Horatio). Next week we fly over to take them to France for half term. Olivia of course can only stay three days because she has a “MASSIVE party” to go to with her friends.
I will be sad not to see her for longer, but wouldn’t want it any other way.

Copyright: Helena Frith Powell 2013


Filed Under: Children, Family, blog --> Tagged With: settling

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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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