Author Archives: Elaine Elkington

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 […]

Last September I had been complaining that a ‘real’ holiday, not accompanied by work, had become, more and more, a ‘pipe dream’. ‘Well, just book something and I’ll fit in with it’, said John, as if he was batting away a mosquito. I had just got a brochure from ‘Travel Editions’. One of the trips […]

I don’t know if it’s a case of getting older but I do sometimes re-read books I have loved. These include ‘The Greengage Summer’ by Rumer Godden, ‘The Lady Vanishes’ by Ethel Lina White, ‘The Balkan Trilogy’ by Olivia Manning, ‘Hotel du Lac’ by Anita Brookner, ‘Unreliable Memoirs’ by Clive James (after his recent death), […]

So often, Christmas Day is disappointing weather wise. But in 2019 it was beautiful – no snow, which would also have looked beautiful, but bright sunshine in a blue bowl of sky. On our way across the Common we passed the giant tree, which reminded us of a heartbreaking accident. Iris Goldsmith died, aged fifteen, […]

It’s late afternoon at the end of November. I just got off the bus which is continuing up river. Van Gogh’s painting ‘Starry Night over the Rhône’ comes to mind as I contemplate the reflections of the street lamps over the water. What shall I make for supper?

Bridget Riley is best known for her eye wrenching optical illusion art in the 1960s – much of it in black and white. The idea spilled over into clothes, some designed by Mary Quant. I still have something from that time in my wardrobe – I must have been so slim, it was so easy […]

An interactive exhibition by this Danish-Icelandic artist is full of light and reflections – a mixture of the beauty of the natural world with the science that it is made up of and a universe that we don’t totally understand. Oddly, I had bought a ‘Little Sun’ (renewable energy) at the Design Museum in Copenhagen […]