This Boy's Life

By Paul Dixey

Autobiography of my life from earliest childhood memories to my upbringing in the Cameroons. From Soldier to bricklayer and finally to oil rig worker.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Vivlia Limited
• Release date: Jun 6, 2014
• ISBN: 9781909833227

Book preview

Chapter 1

I was born at my grandparent’s house at 46 Hallam Crescent Braunstone Estate in Leicester on October 17th 1946. My father was a junior draughtsman and always seemed to be on the move, we never seemed to stay in one place very long, we moved out of my grandparents’ house not too far away to a small prewar prefabbed bungalow complex in Blaby when I was about 3 ½ yrs old, there was about twenty of these prefabs in a semi-circle and ours had been painted blue and white, it looked like they had been built on waste ground as there was just one road in and out and the central area was just hard core and gravel with a patch of green in the middle, it was a rough area and one of my earliest memories is my father getting into a fight with one of the Hutchinson’s who lived across the road, they were a rough lot, more like Gypsies and they were fighting right outside our prefab, Hutchinson had my father bent over the wire fence and was getting the better of him, I remember I was jumping up and down shouting and urging my father on and my mother was shouting for them to stop, then after a while all the women started coming out from the other prefabs and gathered around the two scrappers shouting for them to stop as well, so they stopped only to move to the centre of the waste ground and continued the fight, I don’t remember who won but I remember my father had a deep cut on the back of his shoulder from the fence and my mother was cleaning and dressing it, a few days later I was playing outside in the front garden again when my mother got into an argument with the wife of Hutchinson about something or other and I saw Mrs Hutchinson pull my mother’s hair, my mother retaliated and slapped her face with enough force to knock her to the ground she got up and scurried home, my father had no sooner got home in the evening from work when old man Hutchinson came around again and they started shouting at each other on the door step then before we knew it they were fighting again, we were not the only ones who had trouble with the Hutchinson’s most of the other people had similar problems with them as well, some days later my father’s older brother (my uncle Harry) who was a PTI instructor in the army and also battalion boxing champion came to stay with us for a few days, it seems my father’s family found out about the trouble we were having with the Hutchinson’s and uncle Harry who was on leave at the time said he would come and stay for a few days and find out what was going on, it was the first time I had ever seen uncle Harry, I was playing outside the back door when I saw this soldier dressed in his battle dress uniform with web belt, boots and gaiters and black beret on his head walking up our path he picked me up and put me on his shoulders and walked me round the back yard before putting me down and going into the house, sometime later I heard that my father and Harry were having a pint in the local pub the Blaby Arms when Hutchinson walked in with some of his cronies, things were said and he and Harry had a fight, according to my father Hutchinson never stood a chance, uncle Harry worked him over real good and also one of his cronies who tried to assist Hutchinson, uncle Harry told him if he heard of any more trouble he would come back and he would get the same treatment again, we had no further problems with the Hutchinson’s after that, all this was told to me in later years by my father and Uncle Harry, such happy first memories.

I got to know uncle Harry really well in later years I would pick him up from his flat in St Albans and he would stay with us for a week or so, he was in his eighties by this time but still liked a pint and a game of snooker with me and was still very sprightly, he was a real character and good fun to be with, I really enjoyed those times that we had together, I got a lot of information from him about the early years of his family life with all the brothers and many funny stories about the 22 years that he spent in the British army, but towards the end his mind started to go, he would come down the stairs and say Paul I can’t find my brown shoes and I would reply you have got them on, or if we were playing snooker and he potted a red by the time he got round to the other side to play his next shot he had forgotten what he had potted but he enjoyed it and so did I, sadly things started to get worse, he lived in a small flat on his own in St Albans and one day left the gas on and there was a big explosion that blew all the windows out of his and other adjoining flats, he always said to me if they ever put me in a home I will be dead within a month, well it happened again, the people in the flat below smelt gas and they broke down his door and found him asleep with the gas still on so the council said that’s enough and they put him in a home, he died a few weeks later, it was a very sad way to go for such a fine old independent gentleman. imagine my parents were glad when we moved away from Blaby, I don’t know if it was because of all that trouble or not but it was not long after that we moved back into my grandparent’s council house in Leicester. Many times over the years in between moves we would find ourselves living with my grandma and granddad Mapperson (my mother’s parents) back in Leicester for weeks at a time, I did not mind really because I would get more pocket money on a Saturday, I would get six pence from grandma and granddad and when I went round to my grandma and Granddad Dixey who lived about 2 miles away I would get another six pence and if I took the corona bottles back I would get three pence on each bottle and if my great grandma was up and about I would get some money off her as well. My great grandma Meirs was well into her eighties, she was Irish and a real feisty character and if nobody was watching her she would get dressed up in her finery with stockings and high heeled shoes and fox fur Boa and sneak out of the house, catch the bus and head down town, the police would be informed that she was missing and they would go round her old drinking haunts in Leicester till they found her and then bring her back home in the police car. I saw the police car there once and they were helping her get out of the back seat because she had had a few to many but I am told this was a regular occurrence. The last few years she spent in a wheel chair, I remember her once coming out of the back room in her wheel chair with an empty glass asking for it to be refilled with Guinness, great grandma was 92 when she died, one of the old breed, she was a wonderful old character. Anyway I would end up with more money than the rest of the boys, I could go down to Vestry street in the town centre to the public baths and soak in a big bath full of hot water, this was absolute luxury compared to my grandparents council house where the water was boiled up in a gas fired copper (boiler) then you would have to use the hand pump on the wall and pump it upstairs to the bath where you got about three inches of warm water in the bath if you were lucky. The public baths at Vestry Street cost nine pence and was worth it as you could fill the bath to the top with hot water and stay in there as long as you liked. I would go to the cinema on a Saturday morning with the rest of the boys for the Saturday matinee; this would cost six pence or nine pence depending where you sat. Sixpence was in the neck breakers (up front) or nine pence at the back buy some sweets and ice creams and still have some money left. My grandfather Mapperson had a good sense of humor, I would take all his cigarette cards out of his writing bureau and go outside with the other boys who had their own cards and we used skim the cards in turn up against the fence, the one who got his card closer to the fence would win his opponents cards, one day I was out practicing by myself when a fairly tame jackdaw which I had seen flying around the outside of the house for a few days came down and sat on our garden fence just in front of me and a few seconds later to my surprise said to me go away I replied no you go away I live here and it said no you don’t I do and if you don’t go away now I will call a policeman and then it flew away, I pick up my cards and went into the house, I remember hearing my grandma and granddad laughing together but they stopped when I walked in, I asked my granddad if jackdaws could talk and he said of course they can so that’s what I believed for quite some time and it was not until many many months later that I found out it was my granddad speaking through the letter box which was directly behind the jackdaw, he had been looking through the window and had seen it land on the fence and thought he would have some fun, they both got a big kick out of that, especially with me looking out of the window for the policeman, I think I was about five or six at the time. Many years later when I was a young man in the army and my Parents were abroad I would often spend my army leaves with my grandfather, he liked a pint and often we would be sitting down next to each other in a pub somewhere with our beers and out of the corner of his mouth he would say go away and I would say no you go away and we would both burst out laughing, other customers looked at us as if we were mad, he never forgot it and I haven’t either.

Our milk was delivered by a company called Kirby and West, I would hear the clip clop of the horse’s hooves