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The feather or the chicken?

2nd September 2007 by Helena 4 Comments  

I find myself in the Hotel Amour in the red light district of Paris. My room is called the Library room, the far wall is lined with French porn books and magazines. The remaining walls are painted black and the only piece of furniture in the room is a large double bed.

I have not run off for a dirty weekend with some porn-obsessed Frenchman. I am with Rupert who is writing a series of Paris hotel reviews for the Times. Today we leave our den of iniquity and head for a hotel without naked women on the walls.

Lesbian? Homosexual? Amateur?Last night we ventured out into the surrounding red light district. As we walked past yet another sex shop Rupert commented that there is something deeply unsexy about sex shops. I agree. They are cheap looking, badly designed, badly lit and full of unsavory characters. In fact I don’t really understand the point of porn. In our hotel there are tasteful black and white photos of naked women on the walls as you go up the stairs. They look quite sexy. If they were pornographic they would not be. It’s like that old saying that using the feather is sexy, using the whole chicken is perverted.

Maybe it’s an age thing, but I was in no way tempted to go into any of the sex shops we saw, even the one that rather intriguingly offered to cater for lesbians, homosexuals and amateurs.

There is no doubt about which category I fall into.

Copyright: Helena Frith Powell


Filed Under: Love, Travel, blog --> Tagged With: chicken, feather

4 thoughts on The feather or the chicken?

  • Lloyd says:
    7th September 2007 at 6:30 pm

    as a poor immigrant , i choose to remember a girl from University given the title “Miss E. Rotica”, I doubt highly that she now falls into the “amature” classification.

  • Lloyd says:
    7th September 2007 at 6:32 pm

    as a poor immigrant , i choose to remember a girl from University given the title “Miss E. Rotica”, I doubt highly that she now falls into the “amature” classification. I remember a question arising of Lesbianism to which she replyed “no, but I’m willing to learn”

  • helena says:
    7th September 2007 at 7:55 pm

    I can’t imagine who you could be talking about!
    Hx

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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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