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Frank & Ethel Ansett on their Wedding Day
| I don't know the exact year of my uncle Frank's wedding, but I think it was about 1928. I'd be very grateful for any information about the bridesmaids and Best Man. Frank and Ethel (nee Martindale) moved first to Abbey Wood then to a semi in Bexleyheath and lived there for the rest of Frank's life. He was a joiner by trade, working for Woolwich Council for over 40 years. Because of his trade, he was known by the Coughtrey tribe as 'Chopper'. He hated this nickname and apparently was furious if ever he heard anyone use it. Oddly, his own mother and sister referred to him only as 'Chopper', except when he paid his monthly Sunday visits to us in Normandy Avenue and later Connaught Road. As I remember it, only two things happened during these visits. Sometimes my uncle impressed my grandmother and mother and irritated my father by boasting of all the amazing middle-class gadgets he'd bought, such as a washing machine and refrigerator, and at other times he shocked and offended my mother and grandmother by proclaiming his atheism. There were often acrimonious and deafening debates as a result, usually ending in tense silence until teatime, when all was healed by the sumptuous spread (laid on every Sunday, whether my uncle was there or not). Frank died in about 1985, aged about 81. |