Ted Cockett

Ancestors

Descendants

Problems/Questions Profile manager: Ted Cockett [send private message]

Biography

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Occupation

Occupation:

Note: retired

Occupation: co/dir--sales---telecom engineer

Education

Education: not a lot

Religion

Religion: c of e

Nationality

Nationality: british

Physical Description

Physical Description: 5 feet 8 inches brown hair

Sources

• WikiTree profile Cockett-13 created through tap he import of 4088438.ged on Jun 24, 2012 by [[Cockett-13 |

• Source: Title: marriage Reference: Vital Record CREA 18 Dec 2011, 05:43:42 Page: [Q:3], marriage cert held

Notes

All of the following are from my personal memory and are as i lived them

Note

Address at birth 29 Upper Winchester Road Catford London SE6 uk

Address before marriage 309 Marvels Lane Grove Park ondon SE12 uk

first address after marriage / 12 Birkbeck road beckenham kent

present address/Watermeadow , Kings Mill Lane, Great Shelford ,Cambs, CB22 5EN

due to have major surgery 7th September 2011 for hip revision to left hip due to failure of original hip replacement in december 2001

1939 september:

the air raid syrene went off for the first time during the second world war. I had been evacuated to FOLKESTONE and my aunt Maud had come down to see me.we were walking by the side of the gas works in FolkEstone when this great noise wailed out, I had no idea what it was for. my Aunt explained and we went back to Mrs Mays house to which i had been evacuated.Frightened.can vaguely remember the house if Folkestone but not Mr or Mrs May except they had no children of there own and had three kids from LOndon dumped on them Frank and Connie Pettoe and me.What the hell were they to do we were from a different world S e London and Folkestone have little in common and was nearer the south coast and hence the Germans only 21 miles away in France --we were shelled instead of bombed. I found I didnt like it a bit so ran away back to London,I was caught by the police about 10 miles from my home in Marvels Lane and returned to my mother.I think it tool me some three days of sleeping under hedges and walking .My Mother was not pleased.however i didnt return to Folkestone and Frank and Connie returned about four weeks later. They lived next door but one on the other corner of Dunkery Road.

I lived at the time at 309 Marvels Lane Grove Park London S E 12

the then south eastern edge of London surrounded in fields and woods and Sundridge Park Golf Course,this became disused during the war and became our playground from which we collected all manner of bombs and shells thay had been dropped by the Germans in there haste to get back to Germany .we were situated in direct line with there bombing runs on london and received the stuff they dropped short or jettisoned.

At the time my friends and I really enjoyed this collection activity and would deliver all manner of incendry devices carried on our home made barrow to the ARP warden. He wasnt best pleased with this and we were warned a few times by the local Bobby to pack it up,but what do you do with such things when you have collected them? We tried burning them but that proved a little hazardous ,so we left our collections behind the ARP hut instead of inside.

This went on for a few months until a bomb dropped by the Germans hit the ARP hut and our collection and the whole lot went up. And we got a bigger and better ARP hut to deliver our collections to with a special container at the side for our stuff. Which was emptied on weekly basis by the bomb disposal squad, these guys were quite nice and brought us sweets in exchange for our collection.Among our other games this went on until the bombing stopped around 1943/4.

At the age of 5years I went to school,Marvels Lane Primary School then called an infants school. I had been promised this treat for sometime and eventually the day arrived. I went did not much care for it and decided not to repeat this day of horror, you can imagine my thoughts when i found out on the second day that i had to go to school for years! I was not a happy bunny and revolted by coming home for a week or two at lunch time or any other time i could get out of the gate or climb out if all else failed. The only bit i enjoyed was the sleep poriode after lunch , the teachers put up camp beds for us to lay on for an hour, but I didnt experience this for the first two weeks as i had gone home at lunch time. The school is still there to this day,I wonder what the pupils of 2012 think of it?

I can remember my first caning four hits from Mr Chivers the Head for knocking a bottle of school milk out the hands of a girl needless to say i was innocent but still got the caning ,

The second caning came for breaking a knife when cutting up a piece of meat at school lunch the meat was tough or the knife was weak and again Mr Chivers featured in another four strikes and a very sore backside.

During the spring of 1941 the school was strafed by German Fighter Planes ,I was in the outside toilet having a pee when the wall i was peeing against was hit by machine gun fire and the top of the wall fell apart.That was a bit of shock and I was sent home early for one day.

M y memory of infant school is a bit vague from there on nothing of note happened at school except that at the age of eleven i left and went to Downham Central School some 10 miles from home.

The journey to DCS was by bike there and back most days .The bike came as a reward for having passed my eleven plus exam, and I remember going with my Father to get it from the shop he worked in at the time in Downham quite near the school I was about to go to., it was a Hercules road bike a sit up and beg type rather than the Dawes sport bike I would have liked,but money was not around then and Dad could not afford the extra so I had the sensible option.It served well and survived the two or three road accidents i had on it.More of that later.

My education at DCS was interrupted during my first or second year there by my sharing a friends bicycle by sitting on the cross bar when we ran into a double decker bus, the bus was unharmed but my friend had concussion along with me and i also had a broken left arm that demanded a week in hospital . As we had at assembly that morning been warned of sharing bicycles the school took a very dim view and i was almost expelled. But i survived to eventually captain the rugby and cricket teams and become school captain.

During the third year at DCS the school was merged with the local secondary school under many reorganisation precipitated by the then socialist government. instead of an improvement it became a disaster.

Downham, where the school was situated, was an overspill area for south east london.The inevitable consequence was that majority of the kids there were from the secondary part of the merger and the fighting between the secs and cents became the only thing that was memorable. Keeping discipline, as school captain ,meant i was issued with a cricket bat to belt anyone that was out of line. This all ended on my 16th birthday thank god.

The few memories I have of school years were not really to do with school but more to do with my sparetime activities.I had joined the Boys Brigade at 126 South East London company and took to camping like a duck to water. Soon I became a member of the little team of boys used by the BB to erect entire camp sites for around 60/70 boys .This also included all the cooking during the long summer holidays.

The camp sites were at different locations ,Herne Bay, a few times , Bognor where we lost the marquee out to sea in a gale and the Isle Of Wight at Bembridge, Whitecliffe Bay,the most memorable of the lot.We had a beautiful summer that year and were able to canoe on the sea and swim in water that was so clear you could see the bottom in 15/20 feet of water.I wished it would never end.

The only interruption during one of these weeks camping was my interview with the Post Office for the job of trainee.I found a little difficult as i was at BB camp in uniform which consisted of shorts and other bits and pieces

See photograph, and I had to go for the interview in this uniform.This it seemed pleased the Post Office and i got the job all for 42shillings and six pence a week, thats equivalent in todays money to £2.05p a week.Not a lot. Again the bike came in handy , a one and a half hour ride to work at London Bridge and back. The engineer i trained with Ken Snowden lived only down the road and i rode to work and back with him.

At the end of the two years i became a fully fledged telephone engineer a T2A.

with a salary increase to £6.00 per week.

And so to work. I joined the Post Office as a trainee telephone engineer on a two year course as a Y2YC . This pleasant enough and quite good training.

As in most of the things i had done to then, my gift of playing cricket came to the fore ,as I had played for the School ,London School Boys and now the Post Office,and i got paid for the effort. I did not think it was too bad.

And then at 18 i was conscripted into the RAF,it should have been for two years but i signed on for three and ended up doing nearly four due to a war in Korea, I didnt go to Korea ,but the jobs to be filled got a bit empty and in my case i did about another nine months.

My function in the RAF was for the maintenance of teleprinter and cypher machines, as there were not that many mechanics we each covered a largish area in my case the whole of Europe, as it was then.This was not so bad as it was a built in reason to miss every parade invented and coupled with my cricket and then rugby i was kept quite busy and ..THe two games i played for the 2nd tactical air force.Kept me out of trouble and away from central control.

At 22 i left the RAF and married

And now at 89 and looking back at an age where the world has changed more than at any time since time began, to the point where we have the opportunity of destroying the world as we know it and clearing out the whole of humanity and other life as it is today . END

Biography

Sources