Dates being too narrow, meaningless, needing constant qualification as to where, description, reference. Too many pictures to draw. Like an essay with cross-references. I remember Hohne, a decade after WW2, the Germans hated us. Dad, Keith Dixon joined the British Army at fourteen, living in foster homes and without many choices.He saw service in D'Day and Palestine, Italy and Egypt, that's where he met Margaret, also in the Army and married her soon after. I was born in Hamburg. John is 20 months older and we were inseperable as youngsters. I remember a parade where we stood at attention while Winston Churchill, Viscount Montgomery and the American C'in'C toured the parade ground in a jeep, climbing out to walk and shake hands, I had to reach up to shake theirs, barely aware of who they were. The names meant everything though, like legends come to life.

Catholic boarding schools at age seven and again later. Scottish Roman Catholic, in between, only days at school but every hour more deep immersement in the Faith. The Presentation brothers ruled by fear, with a threat of eternal damnation thrown in. And they had us night and day. The torment was short lived and the Far East was in our future. Living at school in Singapore and pushing the limits of how much we could get away with. I always thought it was magical but not as much as I should have. By that time I had a complete immunity to the threat of that, oh so typically British weapon, corporal punishment, the cane. No more fear, so the weapon was ineffective and therefore the discipline also. I've had fantasies of retribution, but really all that the tyrants did was cement my attitude. The young teenage boys found much to do in what seemed like the vice capital of the Orient. We came close to ruin at school a few times.

The true awakening was in 1967, psychedelics, where I wanted to be and, it seemed where I had been traveling to. In 1964, a previous catharsis had been hearing Bob Dylan singing 'With god on our side'. Everything changed then and again after the acid portal three yeara later. Like a step into my real self.

Living in UK was like a sentence, my behaviour showed the stifle of archaic, narrow civilisation. Excess in all things. I had skill at avoiding the consequences, or rather most of them. The tiny sample I had was excruciating. I seemed to be constantly on a quest and made too many destructive detours. Jail time, well deserved supposedly and a couple of long hospital stays, the result of a bad decision one Monday morning in May 1971. I rode as a passenger on a Kawasaki driven by a complete, though very likeable fool. The biggest fool on the bike was me, I knew he was incompetent, he obviously was unaware of his inexperience and I was just as guilty for encouraging his behaviour. The result being a total of five and a half months in two different Oxford hospitals ending March 1972 including endless rehab. 'Near death' experience is too much of a cliche, you die or you don't and there may be no way to influence which outcome will be yours. Injury is something else, so I had a 'much injured' experience.

1972 was in some ways a rebirth. I started spending more time with new friends including a handful of USAF members from nearby Upper Heyford, moving away from the confines of English small town culture and thinking, at least in spirit. I worked for a while in Banbury, probably the most fortunate move I ever made. We all used to watch the public walk by from our viewpoint on the second storey. One of the regular girls who would pass by was enchanting to me,exquisite and had control of my romantic soul from the first glance. When we finally met and became inseperable she shared the same feelings with me.