Overseas member Val Weeden, born in Cape Town South Africa, has an adventurous spirit. At 17, she had a job with the Cape Times, but she wanted to travel. ‘I wanted to travel around Europe so I worked to pay the rent and in my spare time started writing short stories,’ she says.
Her stories were published in women’s magazines in the sixties and soon there was money to travel. ‘I mostly back packed,’ she says. ‘Scandinavia and Turkey were the most memorable places I visited.’
Returning to the UK, she met Olive McDonald, a long standing member of SWWJ, in the
Kodak offices of her grandfather, who had founded the company in South Africa. Since then, she has been an overseas member.
When Val returned to South Africa to live in Johannesburg, she worked as a copywriter for 21 years, gaining an award at the Cannes Film Festival for a TV script. ‘Nagging away for a long time were ideas for theatre plays.’ The first play she wrote, The Silk Cocoon, was performed in Johannesburg and won an award. Later it was presented in the UK.
Val now lives in McGregor, two hours drive from Cape Town. ‘It was named after a Scottish minister,’ she says. ‘It lies in a valley surrounded by hills and high mountains.' Val’s one hundred year old home `Mintaka` is set in an acre of rambling garden, where almost every fruit and vegetable flourishes. She has grape vines that produce around sixty to eighty bottles of red wine each year. Idyllic!