Olivia was away for most of the summer, staying with my mother in Italy. But when she came home, apart from speaking some Italian, there was no discernible difference. After four weeks of boarding school she has become a teenager.

This may sound bad, it is not. She is still my little Olive, but she does things like talk about boys (one of her classmates apparently asked her out, “where do you go on a date aged 11?” I demanded to know. “I dunno,” she replied. “I said no.”), make-up, Louis Vuitton handbags (all her Russian friends have real ones) and she wanders around with an ear-plug in one ear listening to strange music.

“Our little Olive has grown into a big Olive,” Bea said with some nostalgia when I remarked on how changed she is.

She also does things like lock her bedroom door and sleep until 10am. She came home this weekend with her best friend from school, so I really didn’t see much of her at all. But I did feel, at one stage this afternoon, when all three babes (and Abbie) were at home that all was as it should be.

Next week there is more change. We leave our home of two years for a new house. Prices have finally come down so we are moving to somewhere cheaper, closer to the office and with a pool. It is not our pool, but in a compound of ten villas I don’t think it can ever get too busy.

I am excited about moving, about getting to know a new area and seeing the kids swimming and scootering up and down the little cobbled road that runs through the compound. Moving in Abu Dhabi is slightly different to moving anywhere in Europe. We all pack a suitcase of essentials and then the movers do the rest. Including the unpacking. To me that seems on a level with undertakers of nasty jobs. I hate even unpacking a picnic.

Have a good week.

Copyright: Helena Frith Powell 2010