Growing up in Cooksmill Green

I was born May 01-1953 at number 1 Kings Court Cottages to Albert and Dorrie Piddington, my dad worked for Edward Mallet at Kings Court Farm now known as Home Farm. We all lived and grew up at 2 Kings Court Cottages with my youngest sister Carole, elder brothers John and Ken. My memories of life in Cooksmill Green were of long summer days going to work with my dad at the farm, driving the tractors and working late nights getting the harvest in. My dad also looked after the stock at the farm and I remember steaming potatoes for the pigs to eat, I loved the potato harvest, spinning the potatoes with the tractor in the fields with all the people picking the spuds into those huge boxes, again working late nights to get the potatoes sorted and bagged. My good friend Neil Findlay and myself had the paper delivery round for many years in Cooksmill Green, we used an old Tandem bicycle for our deliveries, we knew everybody in the village and what houses had dogs! I later attended Writtle Agricultural College and worked for Eastern Tractors in Chelmsford as an Agricultural Mechanic. I still have very good friends who live in Cooksmill Green at the Chapel, Paul and Karen Aston, whenever I am back in the UK one of my first visits is to see Paul and Karen as Cooksmill Green is still "Home". I emigrated to Canada in April 1980 and now live and work in Grande Prairie, Alberta, I have been a Commercial Helicopter Pilot for 22 years now.