My life story by Henry J Macey (best e reader for manga .TXT) 📕

 One man’s journey, through life.

From February 1988 to August 1999 I worked as a commodities logistics operative, or to use English I was a lorry driver. The firm I worked for was a large paper company, with paper mills all over the country, with thirteen depots and over four hundred trucks, the drivers had many nights out away from home, they would meet one another in transport cafés all over the country. One favourite stop was the truck stop at Lymm in Cheshire, we would have a meal then sit for hours talking telling jokes and arguing about politics, which I suppose is the same thing really. It was here one cold blustery rainy night this book was given berth, some might say it should have been stillborn but here it is for all its worth.

The truck stop was very large with parking for hundreds of trucks, and there were a hundred tables in the dining room, six drivers from different depots of our firm including myself sat around a table, just ideally talking and swapping jokes when one of them said to me.

“Hay Harry you were out in Australia what was it like, to drive those road trains I bet it was a lonely job.”

“Not in the least” I answered, “on a busy day you could see up to four trucks a day in the bush.”

“Come on then tell us all about it,” he asked, this was defiantly my favourite subject and I needed no ones encouragement to talk for hours about it as I had regretted our move back to England, a few months after we had returned in 1976, I had tried several times without success, to go back permanently. We have been back a number of times, for holidays to visit old friends down under, I love the place, and could waffle on forever about the outback and the fish I had caught. After an hour or so of me waffling on telling story after story, Steve a driver from my own depot, ( ‘he had also been to Australia’) said.

“Harry you should write a book about your life.”

“Who would want to read about me?” I asked,

“look around you,” he said,  I did; of all the tables in the place, the only ones occupied were the ones around our table, and they were all listening to my stories, of my adventures in Australia.   

So that night as I lay in my bunk, I thought it all through and found that I had indeed done things that were not ‘run of the mill’ for most people, perhaps others may find my tales interesting enough, to read about in a book, especially the adventures I had had with my friend Don Ellis in Australia. Now I had a big ‘but’ come up in my thoughts I’m dyslexic, can’t spell can hardly read, how the hell am I going to write a book, and let us not forget my grammar?

My answer came when I got interested in computers, and that fantastic tool the word processor, plus a wonderful piece of software called voice recognition, now I could talk to my computer and it would spell the words and type them, then there was a tool I found later called Grammarly that improved my work tenfold. Now with these tools at my command, I have enjoyed reliving my life by writing it down, I hope you enjoy reading about it.

In 1947 the Australian and British Government's implemented the free and assisted passage scheme for British migrants to Australia, fifty ex-servicemen arrived in Australia in January 1947 as a trial run before the scheme got underway. They were all building workers, destined to build houses in Canberra, the first party of emigrants selected following the formal introduction of the scheme arrived in Australia in June 1947. 

Between June 1947 and June 1950, 78,800 British migrants had travelled under the scheme. By June 1962 that number had reached 427,938 but during the next eight years, no fewer than 506,639 arrived in Australia. Many arrived with jobs secured; others like us went with just dreams of a better life and faith in themselves to achieve that goal, some of these migrants returned to England, for one reason or another. This is the story of just one of them.

My name is Henry Joseph Macey and this is my story, it was hard to know where to begin, so I have decided to give a very short history of my life, to begin with.

I was born on the 25th of March 1939 in Lambeth, London, 0at the age of two, I, together with my family, was evacuated to Wellington in Somerset to avoid the blitz, this was where I spent my childhood and at the age of seventeen, I joined the Navy. At the age of twenty one I was married and had left the Navy, then in February 1968 together with my wife Jane and our three sons, we immigrated to Australia. May 1976 saw us returning to England, and I have regretted that move ever since.

When the family fled the London blitz to be evacuated to Wellington Somerset, my father stayed behind in London, his job as a welder kept him there, ‘something to do with the war effort,’ but he did miss the family dearly and tried in vain to join us.  Later he heard of a job for welders in a factory in Wellington, making military tanks for the Army,  thinking it was the same ‘Wellington’ he happily applied for the job and was accepted. 

Looking forward to seeing us all again he boarded the train that had been laid on, but on his arriving at the factory, he found he was in Wellington SHROPSHIRE! and he now was further away from us, then he had been in London, he would come down to see us all at our new home in Wellington Somerset, for long weekends once a month.  After the war, my father finally joined us in ‘Wellington’, SOMERSET.

I was the last-born, having three elder sisters, the youngest being five years my senior.  You have all heard the ‘poor’ jokes; I don't think it was quite that bad, but I have been told, in my first few years, my sisters had a decent sized doll to play with (namely me).  Being the only boy, I did not have to suffer the indignity of wearing hand-me-downs, although not new, they were at least boy's clothes bought from second-hand shops or from the Salvation Army. 

At Xmas, our presents if we had any were wrapped in newspaper and tied with string, and most of our toys had been handmade by dad or a rag doll made by one sister for another.  One memory I have of that distant past was a fine toy my father made for me, from four pram wheels, a plank of wood, two boxes and several different sized logs.  I was the proud owner of a train engine I could sit in, the only one of its kind in town; and I was surrounded by boys who wanted to be my friend and play on it with me, as we would trundle along the pavement, imitating a train whistle and forcing people to curs us and leap from our path.        

We lived in a row of old mill cottages called Burgage that had an ally leading to them from the centre of town, the cottages were very small; upstairs there were two bedrooms and a landing, I slept on a folding bed or cot on that landing; while my two eldest sisters shared one of the bedrooms.  My youngest sister slept with mum, except when dad was home, downstairs contained a small living room and a scullery, cooking was done in an oven next to the open fire which had a kettle hung on a hook over it. 

This fire was also the only heating source for the house, it was fired by sticks and logs cut from branches I would carry from the nearby woods on a pram, an added fuel source was peace of coke my father would bring home in his lunch bag from his days work at the gas works.  The cold stone floor was covered with homemade rugs, which we made out of old clothing and hessian sacks, these rag rugs are now quite fashionable as a hobby craft. 

To make them we would sit in front of the fire, cutting cloth into strips and with a special sort of hook, we would pull the cloth through the weave of the Hessian bag, doubling it over we would pass the two ends through the loop; pulling it tight, it would make the pile.

Our job as children was to protect these rugs from the fire, sitting in front of it to keep warm, we would have to extinguish the sparks that the logs would spit onto them before too much damage was done to the pile, then we would repair any damaged pile by replacing it. Needless to say, the oldest and shabbiest piece would be placed in front of the fire, to be changed with a better one, if any company was expected.  In the scullery, there was a large wood-fired copper boiler and a large stone sink, on washdays, the women would do the washing in their own sculleries and then would meet, in the garden to help one another put the clothes through a large wooden wringer.

There was only one source of water for all