One of the things I and many others parents love about living in Abu Dhabi is the fact that it is so safe. We can let our children wander to the shops without risk of menace or around the malls without worrying about them being abducted. But there is one aspect of life here that is terrifying.

Abu Dhabi is right down there with Eritrea when it comes to road safety. Being half Italian and having spent a lot of time in major cities like Rome, Paris, New York and London I am used to fast-moving heavy traffic. But nothing can prepare you for the driving here. It makes Hyde Park Corner look like a country lane full of Sunday drivers.

Tragedy struck on Monday when just down the road from our house three small sisters were killed while crossing the road with their three nannies. They were aged four, six and seven. The nannies survived, although one of them is now in intensive care. A speeding car hit the group and the three sisters died outright.

The car was a Lexus. I have long thought the Lexus drivers the worst on the roads. If I see one approaching me I just move out of the way. There is no point in doing anything else. A lot of them seem to believe that their cars are invincible and don’t go under 100 miles an hour.
I can’t stop thinking about those little girls and their family. Three young lives just gone, within seconds. It is too appalling to contemplate. My paper, The National, has launched a road safety campaign as a result of their deaths. I hope it makes some difference and they did not die in vain.

Copyright: Helena Frith Powell 2009

Here are 10 key points you need to know if you are ever invited to an Arab wedding.

1. The music will be LOUD and I mean so loud you can barely talk.

2. The bride will appear extremely late (both to the pre-wedding party and the main event)

3. There will be a lot of food.

4. You will drink mainly sweet tea.

5. There is no possibility that you will ever over-dress.

6. You won’t see a bloke unless you stay around until the very end (around 1.30am) when the groom appears.

7. Everyone will be very nice to you, but you will only be able to tell that by their smiles, as you can’t really hear what they say.

8. You will have to leave any cameras or mobiles with cameras at the door.

9. There are no boring speeches.

10. If you are invited, you are expected to go, it is very rude not to. And you should, it’s good fun. Added to which it is possibly the only time I have ever been to bed in the early morning and not woken up with a hangover.

Girls in dresses borrowed from Mahara and Salama before the pre-wedding party

Our house lit up (Ali’s house is on the left)

Me getting ready

Bea and Leo ready for the party
Copyright: Helena Frith Powell 2009

One of Ali’s daughters is getting married on Sunday. There are huge preparations going on. Yesterday the girls had their hands and arms hennaed (see below pic of Olivia, Bea and Salama, Bea only had one arm done because it hurt too much). This evening there is a party and there have been make-up artists next door preparing Ali’s eight daughters for the event. It is a women only do, and of course there will be no alcohol. This is my first ever party without men and booze; I am intrigued to see what it will be like.


The lack of men does not stop the girls dressing up though. I was told by an Emirati girl I met last night that they are dressing up for potential mother-in-laws. It is like a beauty parade of potential brides. Even old trouts like me are expected to make an effort; the way you dress is a sign of respect or otherwise to the bride. Here you are supposed to outdo the bride, or at least try to, it’s considered rude not to.
It is not only the women who dress up. Our house is covered in lights, it looks glorious, I will post a picture. And we haven’t even had the wedding. It seems there are three days of festivities culminating on Sunday with a big bash which Rupert will be allowed to come to, but he’ll have to stay in another room so the girls can show off their glamorous clothes to each other. Sunday apparently is an all-glitter event. This evening I am just going for the full-length silk Tommy Hilfiger ball-gown with train….proof if ever was needed that women dress for other women.
Copyright: Helena Frith Powell 2009

spot the difference?

One of the things I did when I was in England recently was visit the home-shopping channel QVC. Their American office contacted me a while ago and asked me to take part in a promotion for lipsticks and glosses, because the marketing director had read and really liked Two Lipsticks and a Lover.
The plan is that I will write a short story and it will be sold as part of a special promotional package containing lipsticks and glosses. This is very exciting. The idea that I am going to be paid to write a short story makes me feel like I a really grown-up writer. The title I have been given is Two Lipsticks and a Lovely Gloss. Now I just have to work out what to write.

The film maker Jean-Luc Godard said that “a story should have a beginning, a middle, and an end… but not necessarily in that order.” I have been reading short stories for inspiration. F Scott Fitzgerald is a master. His story A Diamond as big as the Ritz is just brilliant. Then there is Chekov of course. But neither of them are big on lipglossses. Actually my favourite short story of all time is by Edith Wharton. It is called Roman Fever. If you haven’t read it then do.

But as I keep quoting (from the iconic film Muriel’s Wedding) “you’ve got to find your level”. I am not up to the level of those three. But I can at least have a beginning, a middle and an end. And if the readers don’t like the order, they can console themselves with the lip glosses.
Copyright: Helena Frith Powell 2009

Today is out 11th wedding anniversary. Eleven years ago today we were married in a beautiful white church in Hedemora, deep in the Swedish countryside. It is the same church I was christened in, by my grandfather who was the vicar then. Sadly he was not around when we got married, he died quite young.

“What does it feel like to have been married so long?” Rupert asked me. I told him it feels like an achievement. Not that it has been hard work, in fact it has gone very quickly. And I can imagine staying married for another 11 years.

This week was also Olivia’s 10th birthday and today we had her party. The party went on for three hours. But there were times when it felt like it had gone on for longer than our marriage. Now it is over and we are here with my best friend Iona who is visiting from India. Eleven years ago today she was at our wedding too. And twenty years ago we left university together.

Here’s hoping we will be sitting around together in another twenty years’ time. But possibly without the birthday party…..

Copyright: Helena Frith Powell 2009

Sorry for the long silence. We are back after an amazing trip to England and France. I absolutely loved it. OK so it rained most of the time, but on Sunday we were in Herefordshire and it was the MOST glorious day. On a sunny day there is nowhere as beautiful as the English countryside. There is just nowhere you would rather be. The rolling green hills, the flowers, blue sky, white clouds. Add to that a long lunch in the garden with friends and you are in heaven. And actually London and Paris, even in the rain, are lovely cities.

We saw lots of friends which was really great, it is amazing how 20 years on my old university friends seem just the same and we are all just as close. Apart from seeing them I spent most of my time in M & S marvelling at the prices and the gorgeous clothes, underwear, creams and food there. I think I could live in M & S and only leave to buy books now and again.
Whatever else, the whole trip made me feel very strongly that I belong in Europe. Is this a good thing or a bad thing? I suppose bad in the sense that I am unlikely to live there for the next few years, but also good because at least I know where I belong. Although Rupert and I disagree over the Paris versus London location. I favour London, he wants to live in Paris. However, as long as I can take the Eurostar to my friends and M & S every month I may be persuaded.

Meanwhile back home (for the moment) it was Olivia’s 10th birthday yesterday. She and I went for a manicure together which was great fun. She kept asking the poor manicurist what she was doing every other minute. Leo was very impressed with his sister’s advanced age and assumed she would have changed overnight.
“So Barbie,” he asked (he has called her Barbie since he was a baby). “Don’t your shoes fit you now?”

Copyright: Helena Frith Powell 2009

….but were afraid to ask is in this excellent film: www.youtube.com/homeproject. Watch it, it is compelling and very scary. Added to which the filming is stunning.

I am in Paris which has to be the most lovely city on earth. I came over the interview the designer Agnes b. She is lovely; warm, friendly and fun. She has five children and 14 grandchildren, as well as hundreds of clothes shops across the globe, art galleries, a boat that does environmental research and several restaurants. And she’s going to direct a film (which she wrote) next year. Talk about multi-tasking.

Tomorrow we head back to London and then home to Abu Dhabi on Sunday. I leave you with a less depressing image than the above film. Leonardo the King making his world cyber ballet debut. Have a lovely weekend.

I tried not to think about the fact that things normally happen in threes when Olivia and Bea ended up in hospital a couple of weeks ago. But this evening when my friend Harriett (mother of Leo’s best friend Oscar) called I just knew.

“He’ll be fine,” she said. “But he definitely needs stitches.” I turned the car from the direction of the manicurist (where I was planning to get my nails done for the Emirati wedding I was invited to) towards the hospital.
We met at the A & E, Leo’s wounded chin covered with a white dressing. After a wait we were shown in to the doctor. Leo started screaming before the man even laid hands on him. He remembers only too well how painful that needle with anaesthetic into an open wound is. He has split his chin open twice before.

It was horrible. We tried to calm him, we even got him to let the doctor inject him (the nurse, Rupert and me) but as soon as the needle hit his flesh (even though it had already been made slightly numb by a topical anaesthetic) he went totally hysterical. He was practically hyper-ventilating, wailing and screaming.
The doctor, clearly used to seeing children in far worse situations was not sympathetic. After three goes, he said we had one more chance, otherwise they would have to put him out. That would have meant staying the night and even more needles.

I figured there was only one thing for it…..Spiderman.

I held Leo’s head and started to talk to him about all the Spiderman things I would buy him at Hamley’s in London; the mask, the top, and how we would dress Bea as the Green Goblin and he would vanquish her with his flashing shoes. The injections went in followed rapidly by three stitches.

“It hurt until I started to think about Spiderman,” Leo told the doctor. “Why didn’t we think of that before?”

As we waited for his medicine five minutes he talked to the girls on the phone.

“Yes, I had three stitches,” he was saying. “No, it didn’t hurt.”

That’s the good thing about pain, you forget about it very quickly……

He is fast asleep, already looking forward to going back to Oscar’s house tomorrow where he is staying for the week we are away. In two hours Rupert and I fly…..to London and Hamley’s. Oh, and as you can imagine, I never made it to the wedding.
Copyright: Helena Frith Powell 2009

For some reason I have been quite ratty this afternoon. It could be because the children are all over-tired and they are making me grumpy with their bickering.

We are paying the price for staying at some friend’s late last night to watch the tennis. While we jumped up and down on the sofa willing Federer to win, they jumped through sprinklers on the lawn, swam in the pool and played baseball in the garden, until half past ten. All very good fun, but less fun when they still wake up at the crack of dawn.

Anyway, minutes ago there was a ring on the doorbell. I leaned out of the window to see an elegant young Emirati woman outside.

“Who lives here?” she enquired. My first thought was ‘oh WHAT NOW? Are they being driven mad by Leo playing ‘Old MacDonald had a farm’ 18 hours a day? Welcome to my world I would have told her. Or maybe it is a spy, sent on behalf of our landlady to check up on us? Do they want us to park somewhere else so they can accommodate their fleet of Hummers?

Anyway I stomped down the stairs to see what the beautiful stranger wanted. I opened the door. She smiled then handed me candle wrapped in glittery net.

“I have come to invite you to my sister’s wedding,” she said. “It’s the day after tomorrow.”

I was speechless. And cross with myself. And extremely touched. I ascertained that it is a women only event and I can wear what I like. Although I think I will avoid fuscia pink. A friend of mine wore that to one of the Sheikha’s weddings and said she stood out like a sore thumb.

I may go for black like everyone else, but whatever I wear I promise to think of the glass as half full instead of half empty in future. Even if it is only filled with fruit juice, which is certainly going to be the case come Monday.

Copyright: Helena Frith Powell 2009