IN THE WINDOW OF THE ART SHOP in Mansfield’s Handley Arcade was a tin of proper artist’s watercolour paints. Seven-year-old Elaine Kazimierczuk was “always drawing, always with a pencil in my hand” and she longed to buy them, but her pocket money was only 6d a week. Then fate intervened: she found a handbag full of money. It had been dropped by an insurance rep who had been collecting premiums door-to-door. Handing it in to her school lost property, Elaine was later rewarded with a 10-shilling note – about £14 today. She promptly bought the watercolours and some good brushes, and began painting. “I used the tin for years,” she says.
In the
