Our Sepia Saturday theme image this week features a group of people sat around a table in Norway. My submission features a couple of people sat around a table in France. The people are, in fact, my mother and father, Albert and Gladys Burnett, and the photographs dates back to 1962 and a family holiday in France. I was 14 at the time and it was the first time I had been abroad. My parents would have been in their early fifties and, as far as I know, it was only the second time they had been out of the country.
The 1962 photograph was taken, I think, in Boulogne which is a short hop across the channel from Dover. We were about to embark on an epic drive across France to spend the best part of a fortnight camping on the French Riviera.
I do have a photograph from my parent’s previous excursion to France which must have been in the mid 1930s. The photograph was taken in Calais, a few miles down the road from Boulogne, and features a far younger Gladys and Albert with their friend Charlie Pitts.
For more Sepia Saturday posts go to the SEPIA SATURDAY BLOG
alanburnett.com 
Made me think of trips abroad with my mother. Or does it count as “abroad” if you just drive across the border to Canada from Detroit? And then I lamented the fact that I had no photographs of myself sitting at a table when I was in Norway, in that time before cell phones and when I didn’t know I would need photos of myself in various mundane settings everywhere.
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Yes our concept of what is “abroad” is strange. Just as our concept in this country that “the continent” is somehow over the channel and we are not part of it. As for photos in mundane settings – as they age, all photos gather dust and interest.
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Don’t you just love a sidewalk cafe anywhere in the world? And there they are, drinking Coke in the land of wine.
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I can’t remember my parents ever drinking wine or – until much later in their lives – even beer. The third glass at the table would have been a glass of beer if I had anything to do with it, but alas I was too young for a say in things.
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I just love these dual photos of your parents at different ages. I wonder if the 1962 family holiday was a bit of a nostalgia trip for your folks — a remembrance of their earlier visit to France some 30 years before.
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I don’t think so. That first trip was only a day trip on the ferry, the 1960s trip was a far more adventurous affair.
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Glad I tried again, ’cause the first time I couldn’t get through to your post…but then something shiny caught my attention and I forgot to keep trying, until late in the day at least. So I’m guessing your parents are to the left side of that sepia photo, and the friend is to the right?
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No, my parents are on the right and the friend – known in the family as Uncle Charlie although he wasn’t a real uncle – was on the left.
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I wonder if they purposely stood beneath the “English Spoken” sign? (P.S. – Although I have a WordPress blog, something happened when it moved ages ago and WordPress will not let me comment on other WordPress blogs using my own blog address and email. So, I’ll use a different email account and just know it’s me – Kathy from abbieandeveline.com)
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I have always been intrigued by this picture and that “English spoken” sign. The wears in the window are also rather interesting!
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Both photos have a nice freshness of summer holidays. Given all that happened to Britain and France in the thirty years between holidays it must have seemed like a century had passed. As for the sign, I imagine another one below it reads, “French shouted.”
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Love the “French Shouted” joke.
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I particularly love the styles they work in the 1930s.
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Yes, thinking of them later in life I can’t somehow imagine my parents as being “stylish”, but they really were when this photo was taken.
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Love that 1930’s photo- it is so much a character study – are they trying to appear sophisticated? I wondered what was on display in the shop window – it looked like underwear.
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I have to laugh when folks in your ‘neck of the woods’ talk about having a holiday in France & such ‘abroad’ places. It would be like us having a holiday in southern Calif. or Oregon or Nevada. We have been abroad to Scotland and Alaska although Alaska is actually still part of the U.S. The word ‘abroad’ has multiple meanings according to the dictionary. It can mean out of one’s own country in a foreign country. It can also mean simply away from one’s residence – or even just out of doors. That’s pretty wide open.
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