Sex Drugs & Rugby. The early years

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The Lad from Featherstone was a very confused little boy.
Sex part one

I am 8 years old, home is a council house, Featherstone, West Yorkshire.  A mining town (5 pits and ‘slag heap’ taller than the Eiffel tower) population of 15, 000, famous for its Rovers Rugby team which had won many honours against the giants of the game.  My father was captain of the team.  These guys were mean. They also took amphetamine, but that’s for later.

This particular evening my dad was ‘out’ doing what captains of rugby teams did then, and still do today, drinking and …

I was watching telly, my two younger brothers asleep.  My mother, heavily pregnant shouts. ‘Colin, quick, get the phone number from the mantelpiece, go next door (we didn’t have a phone) and call the midwife.  I am going into labour’.  I felt my heart beating in my chest for the first time ever, my knees felt weak and I couldn’t breathe.  I ran found a scrappy piece of paper and ran next door.  ‘Can I please use your phone my mum is having a baby’.   I dialled the number only the get the answer Yorkshire Imperial Metals, my dad’s factory.  My mum’s having a baby, sorry son I can’t help your dads not here.  Why the neighbours did nothing I do not know to this day.

Panic, home, my mother is now on the bed saying please help I need the midwife.  No other number.  The doctors.  Run.  I ran half a mile to the doctors, banged on the door and said ‘help my mother is having a baby.  A woman came back with me, no car we ran all the way back.  The woman said boil the kettle and wait outside the door.  I remember thinking this must all be my fault.

At approximately 10pm that evening my sister Mandy was born.  I think my dad came home about midnight.

Mandy died of breast cancer in her prime at 49. The anniversary of my sister’s death was yesterday. 

So I knew a bit about sex, vaginas and stuff. What happened next completed my early sex education.  

Sex Part two

The Baby sitter.

My first recollection of sexual arousal was at the age of 9.  New Year’s Eve, sister and brothers asleep, me feeling ill in my pyjamas on the sofa and the 16 year old babysitter opposite watching telly.   The babysitter decided to sit next to me on the sofa and asked if I would like to touch her breasts.  I felt my heart beating in my chest for the second time ever, my knees felt weak and I couldn’t breathe.  I touched her breasts.  She then asked me to lie on top of her and push up and down on her.  I still had my pyjamas on, and the feeling was something I had never experienced.  She touched me and I touched her.

I remember thinking this must all be my fault Guilt, Guilt Guilt, was the only emotion.  To get to my junior school meant walking past the senior school.  God what if she saw me.  I started walking to school an alternative way so I could not be seen.  I was scared, told no-one and at the same time was aware of this arousal and thought I was bad.

My Junior School

Gordon Street junior school was an old Victorian building on 4 floors with a playground surrounding it.  I used to run, play, slide on the ice and have fun.  Until I discovered sex.  Now I used to sneak pictures from the mail order books of woman in underwear into the school and show my mates.  The teacher caught me and told me I was sick and perverted.

A few nights later I found myself rubbing my penis on the curtains next to my bed and thought I was peeing myself.  My first ever orgasm, all over the curtains.  They went hard & sticky.  Guilt, this must be bad.  Trouble was I kept doing it.

My last two years in junior school were troubled.  The teachers seemed to pick on me.  I got two bollockings in assembly; one for having covered a girls head in Sellotape and the second for singing the morning hymn too loudly, when the headmaster, said to me “When I need a new horn for my car he’d come to me”.  At the age of ten I realised I could not sing.

I liked rugby and played in the street.  My dad was, after all, the local hero. One day walking home from school a lad walked up to me and tried to stab me while saying something about my dad. I sidestepped but he did cut my hand before running off. I jumped on a bus, went to Ponty hospital, five stitches and bus home. Just seemed normal.

Needless to say I failed my 11 plus and went to the secondary modern school next door.

Rugby Part 1 Secondary Modern School

On the first day the headmaster said just because we had not made the grammar school it did not mean good jobs were not available.  An apprentice should be the goal, learn a trade.

The secondary school had a rugby team but only for the second year and above.  I was in the first year but went along to training and found I got in the team.  Played 11 games & lost 11 games. Game twelve was against South Featherstone who were top of the league.  I had this idea that if I pretended to pass the ball and then didn’t (it’s called a dummy) and then ran like hell, it might work.  It did, we won 3-0 and when I left to go home I was beaten up.  My first beating.  The only bit I remember is lying in the side of the road crying.

The next day I went to see the headmaster and took my dad with me.  I said, ‘I don’t want to be in this school any more, I want to go to the Grammar School’.  He said ‘At the end of the year, the top three in the exams go to the Grammar School and re sits their exams.  If you pass you start in the first year at Grammar School, even though you will be second year age’.

That day I discovered schoolwork.  I came second in the exams.

Have a good week.

Lambo

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