A Lad from Featherstone

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