���I know you, you’re the man from the magazine, you’re Ted, aren’t you?”

The ‘Ted Talks’ column in Wymondham Magazine has changed Ted’s life, and now he can’t walk far in town without being recognised by passers-by. Often, they have connections to Ted, and disclose that “My Dad / Gran / Best Customer used to know you.”

These acts of recognition have opened the floodgates for Ted to his memories; they have reminded him of people he knew, places he used to visit, and professions that he once had, but had long forgotten.

Today his mind is buzzing with recollections of the events of his past ninety-one years and he can flip from one time period to another at the drop of a hat.

It is the ‘close shaves’ of his life which have come back to him most vividly. In this column, Ted has mentioned the time when he was hit by a car at the age of five in 1932. Yet now he can recall a man lifting his “frozen by shock” body off the road shortly after the accident and carrying him home to his mother.

Ted remembers that he had a talent for misadventure; as a young boy he jumped out of his parents’ upstairs bedroom into the garden because he wanted to play outside. Then later his Mum wondered “How did he get out there?”

He also used to keep an eye out for Lenny the plainclothes detective. In the 1940s, Ted and his schoolmates used to illegally purchase woodbines from the local tobacconist – a practice which Lenny used to crack down on. Ted often had to concoct spur of the moment untruths, such as about being lost in town, to keep the long arm of the law at bay.

Looking back, this was a time when teenagers took up the smoking habits of their parents, while neither generation knew about the risks of cancer and of other diseases.

Fortunately, Ted is fit and well today, “I can still ride a bike and I can still tell the tales!”