A Lad from Featherstone

How to build a worldwide publishing business about bits of cars. I was fortunate enough to interview John, two years before he died. Enjoy. Lambo

As a lad I would visit my local barbers shop in Green Lanes, Featherstone for a short back and sides.  I was intrigued to hear the barber offer some of his customers, never me, ‘Something for the weekend?’ and slip a small packet into their top pocket. That’s for later. Firstly, we need a quick flashback to last week along with some more right brain activity. One of last week’s readers said they needed a joint to follow it! Whatever works for you is fine by me; however I do need to take you back to where we left off: That bloody plane of yours is still 3,000 ft in the air and will need to land at some point or else! We begin our descent and reach the clouds.  It's 6 pm, Friday and the gym for me. You? Some of you will glide softly to the land and park for the weekend. You may go to the cinema; have a meal, yoga, a concert perhaps or even Friday night telly.  I had over 100 views in three hours last Friday so maybe you are reading my blog. However, some of you (I have t

‘Scientists say London has the highest concentration of cocaine in sewage of anywhere surveyed in Europe. The results, which take into account the size of each city's population, show that on average, drug users in London relieved themselves of 737mg of cocaine per 1,000 people during the week in 2014.’  BBC News. Thursday 4th June 2015 A quick bit of searching the net and it works out some folk in London are taking 1gm of coke per day!  ‘And the rest’ my dear friend Rob would have said.  Sadly he died of  heart disease in his prime, (yet still outlived his dad, who died  of the same disease 10 years earlier) but not before introducing me to ‘Torture Garden’ and the ‘Eyes Wide Shut’ side of London  in 2001. I did imbibe, saw the dangers, could easily have self destructed but jumped ship soon after.  Phew! That was close and all for later. Did you know one of the original recipes for Coca Cola contained ¼ gm of coke, per bottle? It had been a quiet and reflective week until no

I remember running my hand over her thigh and feeling the flesh above her stockings. I didn't know it was abuse.  I did know it was all my fault! It took the train eight hours each way to visit my parents in Bridlington, Yorkshire, last weekend. Brid is now the largest Crab & Lobster handling port in the UK.  It’s also the holiday destination, where my family stayed, in a caravan each summer, for the first seventeen years of my life.  My first ever plane journey was aged 18 to play rugby for England schoolboys against France. Yorkshire holds many happy memories but one (which changed my life) not so happy. As I said last week ‘what doesn't destroy you makes one grow’. Normanton Grammar School are having a 50th anniversary reunion this June and all being well, I shall attend.  Memories of the school and my childhood come flooding back as I journeyed north. I remembered I had failed the Grammar School entrance exam. I also recalled my introduction to sex. New Year’s E

My life has been turned on its head over the past few months. I’m told; what doesn’t destroy you makes one grow. I hope so! I have quit my Mayfair office, the yacht in St Katherine Docks is for sale and it’s time for a new challenge.  In saying goodbye to London and hello Sherborne it brought back memories of my second seismic change of direction in April 1981. The first, leaving Yorkshire for London, is for later. After six years as a physical education teacher and a worn out rugby body I decide to retrain as a Chartered Surveyor, as you do.  I knew nothing about property but my brother was a builder and I had two mates who were already training.  I enrolled with Reading University (College of Estate Management) to sit my professional exams. Problem!  The minimum entry requirement was two A Levels and I had one; Geography grade C.  I didn’t work at school. At Loughborough I scraped a Certificate of Education, not a degree, coming 115th out 120 and the last four failed.  Th

For my previous post click here. “The USSR’s role in the defeat of Nazi Germany World War II, 70 years ago is seen as the nation’s most glorious moment.  But there is another story – of massive rapes by the Soviet soldiers of German women in the dying days of the war.... Some readers may find this story disturbing“. (BBC News.– 1 May 2015) Not the BBC (it's gone!) but: The Guardian 'They raped every German female from eight to 80' 'Calls to avenge the Motherland, violated by the Wehrmacht's invasion, had given the idea that almost any cruelty would be allowed. Even many young women soldiers and medical staff in the Red Army did not appear to disapprove. "Our soldiers' behaviour towards Germans, particularly German women, is absolutely correct!" said a 21-year-old from Agranenko's reconnaissance detachment. A number seemed to find it amusing. Several German women recorded how Soviet servicewomen watched and laughed when they were raped.

I read last week that children in the UK were suffering from Vitamin D deficiency because their parents were covering them in sun block or they were glued to computers rather than being outside in the sunshine. He ho. Had my 85 year old dad staying. We talked about, football (He’s a Chelsea fan and thinks Jose'  Mourinho  was a Yorkshireman in a past life), gardening, more football, music (Pink Floy d or Dire Straits) cars and money. Sound familiar with your dad, different bands maybe?  We  talked about  our famil y line, m y dad is a proud Yorkshireman . Sorry Dad but I’m not.  I looked it up!  I am in fact a mixture of Viking, Derbyshire and Lancashire.  Somehow that enables me to live by the title of Yorkshireman.  It is true to say there have been many famous Yorkshiremen throughout history.  Indeed, Richard III was given a state funeral in Leicester a few weeks ago, as his death in 1485 ended the Wars of the Roses and the Yorkists rule of the country. I have a dear fri

For my previous post click here. Sherborne Abbey, Dorset.  Easter Saturday 2015. I have always liked churches and I am not averse to a 10 minute nap on a pew. Some folk call it meditation.  The calm is welcoming. I couldn’t get into the Abbey on Easter Saturday, except during a hymn on the half hour and that was 40 minutes away. Dejected, I read Poem of the Month for April 2015 displayed at the entrance. It read: The prayer stool: I leave aside my shoes , my ambition: Undo my watch, my timetable: Take off my glasses, my views: Undip my pen, my work: Put down my keys, my security: To be alone with you, the only true God. It made me wonder who my true God was. Ten years ago I was a RYA (Royal Yachting Association) instructor skippering a 42ft yacht leaving Dartmouth on passage to Guernsey with five students, as you do.   It was a 14 hour trip, crossing shipping lanes and entering Guernsey through the northern channel with treacherous seas and danger

For my previous post click here. Why do so many men over forty kill themselves? BBC News 13th April 2015 ’A hundred men die a week. It is more prevalent than at any time in the last 14 years and men are four times more likely to end their own lives than women’. Hang on, that means a man in the UK commits suicide every half hour.  Surely not! Well I didn’t as I am writing this blog.  It did cross my mind at 44; before spending two years on Prozac, but that’s for later. Abraham Harold Maslow was an American psychologist who was best known for creating Maslow's hierarchy of needs, a theory of psychological health predicated on fulfilling innate human needs in priority, culminating in self-actualization.   (Wikipedia) His thesis states that there are five layers to our needs as human beings. It also tells us that the 1 to 5 order cannot be circumvented i.e. It is a progression and can only take place in the prescribed order. Even the rich and famous fall foul of the rule

For my previous post click here. January 2009. Boarding Cunards Queen Victoria leaving Southampton for New York My ex-wife drove me to the cruise ship terminal in Southampton as I had decided the only way to write this story was to make it part of an adventure. So off I went, all alone, on a big scary ship.  As I placed my hand luggage on the security scanner I started to shake, more on the inside than the outside.  I felt hot, my chest was beating and I felt dizzy. Shit I am having a panic attack.  I walk through the scanner and as my hand luggage pops out of the scanner it is taken to a desk and I am beckoned over.    They search my bag.   I smile; my heart is trying to explode, sweat is running down my armpits and my legs are weak. At last I am free. I to rush to my steerage class cabin, lie down on the bed and use my panic attack abdominal breathing  technique  to calm down.  My acupuncturist says rubbing the soles of your feet on the ground whilst sat stimulates a reductio

For a link to my first ever post click here. Five hundred miles last week. Dewsbury of all places!  It has an amazing open air market, more like a bazaar. There is also a wonderful, if architecture is your thing,  Victorian shopping arcade.  Cool.  The week ended in the mosh pit at a Skunk Anansie concert in Brixton, as you do. Driving home on Sunday reminded me of a life changing weekend some forty odd years ago. I discovered the power of sex, drugs and rugby on a cold, wintry weekend in February 1967. I was at the tender age of 14. I was living in Yorkshire and attending Normanton Grammar School where I had become something of a good rugby player or rather, a bloody good rugby player.    I had received a letter the previous week advising me that I had been picked to play in the final England under 15’s school boy trial at the Chepstow Army Apprentices College.     The college was infact located in Beachley which although on the welsh    side of the River Seven, was in fa

Fat, unfit but a sober Colin Monday 30th March 2015.  St Katherine Docks London living on-board Yacht Frangi. Eight weeks ago my psychiatrist Jeremy (seen him many times) prescribed in his words, 'a new wonder drug for alcohol cravings'. It is called baclofen and it works! I now have lots of free time on my hands, no more three pints in the Dickens Inn and the rest.   I'm back working, building my Mediation practice from my office in South Molton Street.  I share it with my longest ever friend, Gordon Wood. We have known each other for forty five years.  I tend to stay late in the office. I'm at my desk right now with itch that needs to be scratched. I have never written anything creative in my entire life but here we go... My story. Living on a 49ft Yacht in St Katharine Docks sounds glamorous. It is at times, a wet Monday in March not so clever. From cockpit to to the pontoon, along the decking, up the ramp, gates open, soaked already, along the walkway, g