Author Archives: Elaine Elkington

I met my friend Carolyn for lunch at Casa Brindisa in South Kensington in May. The food is very good and the service friendly and efficient but what I want to say here is that the cappuccino topped the list of my best to date!  A real treat.  I hope they can keep that up. […]

April was packed full of highs and lows – all squashed up together –  just like no buses followed by three,  racing each other round the corner.  At times, I found myself taking on the air of a bull with its head down, deeply frustrated and ready to charge.  But, all in all, it was […]

Alex Catto is my chiropodist and podiatrist who came up with a new form of insole, which he learned about while attending a conference in Italy.  It was lucky for me that he was my chiropodist. I had tried orthotic insoles from the hospital but they hadn’t helped the pain in my feet.  I only […]

I recently read a short paragraph on a YouGov survey mentioned in the newspaper, which said of the 15,000 people questioned, 60% would have liked to make their living as a writer and the second most popular choice (53%) was being a librarian, followed by being an academic.  I wondered how the sample of people […]

We had a rendezvous planned with a friend in Kew Gardens on the 2nd January.  Waiting for the North London Overground train to arrive at Kew Gardens station, we explored the triangular enclave of interesting shops.  A bookshop, a guitar and music shop, a butcher, greengrocer and hairdresser.  Inviting looking cafés, restaurants and the inevitable […]

Welcome to my Lycian coast travelogue.  Unlike most of my ‘blogs’ to date it has over 13,000 words and almost 300 photographs.  So it’s a bit longer than usual …  but with computers you can just skate through it at top speed.  I’ve really enjoyed putting it together and I hope you will like looking […]

This was an historic event, since it’s taken us many months to make our invitation to Forest Row happen.  The sun was shining after a miserable week of damp weather and I felt a flush of excitement and relief to leave the incessant routine of city life.  We don’t have satnav but I love maps […]

It was still dark when I left the house. As I turned the corner a young fox, looking like a two dimensional angular cartoon character, leaped out in a wide arc from behind a car and melted into the shadows. I had been tempted to take a taxi to the Eurostar but as I walked […]

Tonight it was supper for one. There were a few new potatoes left over from dinner last night. I fried two red onions with garlic and a courgette, chopped fine, with the potatoes. Then I cut up half a large cabbage to steam it. Supper for oneself means not having to worry about anyone elses’s […]

The mellow warmth of a late September sun, which somehow illuminates everything in such sharp detail. There’s the feeling of time slowing down, encouraging a companionable silence. We made our way through the spinney, then down past the small pond, before climbing up the bracken covered slope towards Pen Ponds. In the long grass we […]