My wedding dress is stolen in France

My postcard from Paris to my sisters Inel and Doreen written on the 18 June 1981, mentions that we were making our way to Dijon and then onto Nice. 

This final leg of our first overseas trip was with Telemecanique, the French firm that Fred worked for.

We were fetted and spoilt throughout the visit and I had packed my wedding dress to use for evenings out. 

The dress was beautiful and simple, ankle length, with a jacket and made from an off-white knitted boucle.

I have Mom's little notebook where she recorded the cost of the pattern and the fabric, it came to R63.10 in 1979! She made my dress, sewed her own as well as making dresses for Inel and Doreen. In fact, she planned and delivered the whole wedding. Quite wonderful.

I cannot remember if I did indeed wear my dress while we were 'razzling until late at night' but I can vividly remember the theft.

Fred and I were on the Mistral, an SNCF train to Nice. The photo below shows us enjoying a first class meal.

My suitcase was stolen from the baggage compartment. I was devastated, my dress was in the suitcase along with many of the souvenirs and gifts we had bought while in Greece, Holland and England.

I can remember been angry with Fred for taking this photo of me making a statement at the police station in Nice.

From my slumped body I can see how unhappy I was.

Telemecanique were so kind after the theft, they took me clothes shopping in Nice. That certainly got me smiling again.

I may not have my wedding dress but I still have the Daniel Hechtor pants suit in my cupboard. It's black with tiny red hearts. The pants are to small but I enjoy wearing the jacket.

Remembering my lost wedding dress.

A restaurant in Athens called 'Espresso"

I was 25 years old and travelling overseas for the first time.

It was May 1981 and Fred combined a holiday with a business trip to Telemecanique in France.

Our first destination was Athens and I sent this card home to my parents who were living in Howick. The excitement in the writing is tangible, 'Athens has been incredible and strange so different to our world. The museums have been astonishing.'

I was completely in love with travelling from my very first trip even though I wept buckets when Olympia Airlines went on strike and cancelled our flight to Crete. It took me a while to regroup and make alternative plans.

Looking back it must have been Fred trying to cheer me up that made him so cavalier at a restaurant called 'Espresso' in the Plaka, the old part of Athens beneath the Acropolis.

We had the only, rather cosy, balcony seat with a view over the busy streets. Their card 'urges' you to come to dine and drink, and so we did.

Taking in Athens, summer of 1981.

I have no clue what we ordered or drank looking at this bill.

It was the first and only time I have ever experienced Fred throwing caution to the wind in a restaurant, ordering food and drinks at will, he said yes to everything, but not without consequence!

I riffled through my photo album from 34 years ago as I remember keeping both the restaurant bill and our hotel bill.

Fred had spent more at "Espresso" for the one night of dining than for the 3 nights at the Plaka Hotel which included food too.

He still tells this story, he laughs now, but on the night he was unaware, too much alcohol to read the fine print, so it only dawned on him when he got the hotel bill what had happened.

He was shocked for quite some time.

"I have tried very hard."

Kersten family during the early school years at Norwood Primary School

How delighted I am that I kept some of the children's art, their Christmas notes and their school letters.

Barry's card would have been with his school books when Fred and I did a teacher visit during his Primary School years. It is a joy, colourful, bold and his message is too precious.

He still tries 'very hard' in all he does.

Oh and Barry, one more thing I love you too!

Learning mindfulness from Mom

Mom's schedule of furniture that Dad inherited from Kalkval

The more I dip into our legacy of letters and notes from the family, the more I appreciate the effort that my mother made to be mindful of this legacy. She preserved the story of Dad's family history by researching and creating the Wedderburn Book. She also was careful to document the special items that she and Dad valued like the jewellery, vases, paintings, silver and furniture.

Our homes are dotted with these special things and I know that my sisters love their pieces as much as I do. Even Shawni has a dressing table and some of her Nan's art in her home in Wellington, New Zealand.

This is one of my mother's lists. I found this photo of Shawni sitting on the Queen Anne chair that Mom had documented. The chair has pride of place in my hall next to the kist I inherited from my mother's Mom.

I have taken this mindfulness on board.

I have started a word notebook with photos and the story as best I know it behind my inheritances. This ancestral blog has gotten me involved with the generations that have gone before, it has been a remarkable journey of insight and discovery. I am loving it all.

....and Mom's Cake

John and Estelle Wedderburn, cutting the wedding cake, 13 March 1954

I have this black and white wedding photo on my desk here at home and I am quite in awe of  this magnificent wedding cake.

It's the flamboyant flowers that catch my attention, and I would love to know what colours were used.

Perhaps Dad will remember, I will ask him.

The photo got me looking for Mom's fruit cake recipe that she would make up for Christmas. I have her hand written recipe and will share it with my sisters as I am not sure if they have a copy squirrelled away too.

Maybe one day I will get to making it.

Nanny Ina's ginger beer recipe

Shirley Wedderburn, my cousin from Bloemfontein, and I were talking a few years back about how we both remember the cloudy bottles of ginger beer in the pantry on the farm.

The odd raisin in the bottles must have slipped through the muslin cloth because I can recall those plump, moist raisins with the kicker of ginger as I popped them in my mouth.

The beer was fizzy, it seemed alive, was pungent with ginger,  and quite marvellous to drink ice cold on a hot December afternoon when we came up for tea after swimming in the Modder River.

This is the recipe as Shirley remembers it.

Ina Moodie Wedderburn (nee Phillips), Dad's Mom and my Nanny Ina

The "Vagabond" on La Charente

Life onboard the Vagabond, our 'bateaux habitables', on the Charente River

Floating down La Charente, which is a charming, tranquil river in the southwest of France, between Saintes, Cognac, Jarnac and Chateauneuf, for a week in the June of 1987, was 'good fun'. 

Fred and I did just well with 2 little children in a boat, bathing them in the sink, and just generally making sure they did not fall into the river....


Reading my postcard to Mom, I could pack my bags right now and hire another boat.

There is nothing quite like cycling into a village in France, finding a boulangerie for baguette, picking up cheese and charcuterie, buying summer fruits, opening some easy drinking wine and having a picnic on the bank of a river.

Fred and Barry look so pleased with themselves in this photo, what an impressive place to choose to stand for the first time! Fred loves Roman history and the Triumphal Arch dates back to 19AD, the Gallo-Roman Arena in Saintes is also impressive as were the 11th and 12th C churches, I know he must have been having a ball.