Author Archives: Elaine Elkington

I talk about these two men in my biography on this site. However, I recently came upon their obituaries when I was looking through old photos and wanted to celebrate the time I spent with each of them. I loved them both. I had the good fortune to be personal assistant to John St John […]

These ‘coronavirus’ months at home began with feeling anxious. It settled down into a routine, restful at times, restless at others. Gradually, lockdown started to become tedious and I became desperate to achieve something other than domestic chores – all necessary but many of them repetitive, made worse by not much of a change of […]

I didn’t know that these underground tunnels which spider out from Waterloo station even existed. They have been turned into an arts space, which include an underground theatre. Spooky bars with shadowy characters in dark corners made me feel I would never see daylight again. Oddly, we came upon a family we knew well, who […]

Walking up Ludgate Hill from Fleet Street, I was about to cross the road towards St Paul’s Cathedral … when this stopped me in my tracks … and there were more! I don’t know what these sculptures represent and so I’ve just put in my own interpretation of the faces. They are magnificent. ‘Emily Young […]

Sales of soap have rocketed during ‘coronavirus’. A gift of soap has always been welcome – our forced early return from Greece in March, Covid-19 snapping at our heels, had six bars of orange scented olive soap tucked into my luggage, which were happily received by friends. I began to think of the origins of […]

Working from home during ‘coronavirus’ lockdown has meant that toast and marmalade, which we usually only have for breakfast on Saturdays and Sundays has been added to our normal weekday fare of yoghourt with cereal, fruit and nuts. Our best choice is ‘Duchy’, organic thick cut but we’ve had to cast around when that wasn’t […]

The weather in mid-April seemed to range from one extreme to another – damp and cloudy to bright, hot and sunny, still and serene, to windy, gusty and sometimes stormy grey, with raindrops obliterating themselves, almost like machine gun fire, at the window. ‘Coronavirus’ keeps me ‘safe’ at home and I watch these weather patterns, […]

We’re meant to be in Lisbon now, with trips to Sintra and Porto but all is lost, owing to ‘coronavirus’. My first ever visit to Lisbon wasn’t so long ago – so I’m re-engaging virtually. This is a beautiful city on the River Tagus – which is very wide and rolls down into the Atlantic […]

A surprising happening … my spiny cactus suddenly burst out with all these flowers … Shockingly glorious! I love ‘pink’.

I was aged ten when I went to the boarding school of St Mary and St Anne, Abbots Bromley, in 1957. Seven years later, in 1963, I left to explore the world. In July 2019, there was an article in ‘The Times’ about Abbots Bromley closing down. It had changed over the years from a […]