January 10th 2005
WHEN ten-year-old Annie Rivet put a message in a bottle and threw it into the English Channel in 1963, she never imagined that the ten-year-old Dutch boy who found it would become such a big part of her life. After 27 years of marriage and two children, however, the couple have told the story of their remarkable relationship for the first time.
Now Mrs Elffers, Annie contacted The Times after a reader in the Questions Answered column asked if anything had ever been achieved by putting a message in a bottle and throwing it into the sea.
Mrs Elffers, now 51, said: “I liked stories about pirates and that’s how I knew about messages in bottles. So when my parents took me to France on holiday, I had my Tizer bottle ready and threw it in the sea halfway across the Channel.
“The note, which we still have, said: ‘Anyone finding this message please send to Annie Rivet,’ with my address in Edinburgh, ‘stating where found. Thank you. Merci Bien.’ I thought it would end up in France.”
The bottle washed up on Noordwijk beach in the Netherlands and was found by Niels Elffers. He said: “I found about ten or twelve bottles with messages, but most of them were from ships, so this one was special from the beginning. I just kept on writing to her. I don’t know why — I just did.”
The first letter from the Netherlands, which had been translated into English by Mr Elffers’ mother, caused great excitement.
“It was addressed to A. Rivet, which was also my mother’s initial,” Mrs Elffers said. “She opened it then passed it to me. We all shrieked when we realised it was a reply to the bottle.”
Annie and Niels first met at the age of 12, when Annie’s parents went to the Netherlands on holiday and called in on the Elffers family in Utrecht.
“I particularly liked the way he did cartwheels down the street,” she said. As teenagers they shared a passion for music, classical and modern.
“He used to send me happy letters with drawings and photographs taken by his father,” she said. “He even made me a red wooden star candle-holder, which we get out every Christmas.”
They stayed in touch and met for the second time when they were 20.
“I was working in France one summer when I was a student,” Mrs Elffers said. “He and his parents visited and invited me to spend a week with them in Holland, which I did. I had a very pleasant time.”
After finishing her studies, Annie found a job teaching languages in The Hague, but insists that it was not because she had any designs on Niels. “I just wanted to be international and travel; it wasn’t because of him,” she said.
One summer when they were in their early 20s, they discovered that they had made separate plans to travel around France, so decided to pool their resources.
“She just put her rucksack in the back of my car and never left,” Mr Elffers said. Their romance developed with the help of a few glasses of French wine: “It just happened really. I didn’t take her on holiday with that intention.”
The couple decided to live together and moved to Vianen, in the Netherlands, where Mr Elffers was working. They married there in 1978, at the age of 25, and stayed for 27 years.
“There was always something very special about our relationship,” Mrs Elffers said. “I didn’t fancy him at first — I just thought he was a nice guy. I had other relationships, but by my mid-20s I knew him quite well and choosing someone for marriage is not the same as choosing someone to go out with.”
They have a son, Daniel, 25, and an adopted daughter, Rebecca, 20. Last year they moved to Wymondham, Norfolk. Mrs Elffers, a language teacher, said: “We wanted to move on. Holland has become like one big city. It’s very overcrowded and not as pleasant as it used to be. The streets are always clogged with cars.”
Mr Elffers, a mechanical engineer, said that the secret to their enduring relationship is that he and his wife have always had common interests and often think alike.
“I don’t believe in fate,” he said. “I’m a very practical Dutchman, but when I tell other people and they are so amazed and sometimes disbelieving, I have to wonder.”
Mrs Elffers concluded: “We are still very happy. It has always been a special relationship. How can you marry someone else after all that?”
http://www.timesonli...1433241,00.html (UK only)
Some of us spend hours in a club getting wrecked, some of us use the Internet, some of us accidently look at a friend the right way, some of us throw bottles into the sea and become penpals with a Dutchman.
I swear, I'm never going to understand love...
NOTE: I've found out why no one outside of Britain can ever real the links to The times' website - they're tight bastards who only let the British read it for free...
CHEFELF EDIT: Fixed repeating text.
This post has been edited by Chefelf: 11 January 2005 - 12:23 PM