A Lad from Featherstone

  Today is my eighty eighth alcohol free day. In my larder sits the last bottle of San Miguel, from 31st August, the one I didn’t drink.  Alongside it is an unopened bottle of Champagne, two bottles of Soave and a quarter bottle of Old Pultenay, Sheila’s favourite single malt. If visitors were allowed I would still have something to offer them. Their presence, on the shelf, is of no concern; there is no desire to consume them, nor is willpower needed once your reach your 'sweet spot', as it's known in baclofen medical speak. First some background .. On 25 th March 2020, just as the first lockdown closed the planet, I sent a video message and email to Boris Johnson, our Prime Minister. I copied in the BBC, every national newspaper, and my MP. It read.. Dear Prime Minister My video message below [Copy link at the end] comes from over fifty years of experiencing the effects of alcohol first hand.   My proposal is not a solution but it will substantially help alleviate t

  Frangipani is the name of Lambo’s yacht . Lambo is my alter ego, my Viking DNA, my life force, yang energy, my third and fifth chakra's in full flow, rugby, sailing or dancing heaven.  Colin by contrast is yin, shy, thoughtful and enjoys his own company. He loves writing, music, cooking and gardening.  They are in constant battle, seeking the ever-elusive balance, equilibrium and contentment. I am the mediator. As such, writing one life story is not easy,  the research takes longer than the typing and the dyslexia is ever present. Lambo’s ego and love life have just interjected. November 2002, Lambo is 49 years old . He is a fat lump, his marriage is a mess, his son Chris, has hair to his waist plus, eleven piercings covering his face, lip, and tongue. Colin is on antidepressants (Prozac) and drinking too much. Lambo needed a distraction, an adventure, retail therapy on a grand scale.  It was love at first sight, just an internet profile, but he was hooked. Her lines were perfect

Synchronicity (German: Synchronizität) is a concept, first introduced by analytical psychologist Carl Jung, [1920] which holds that events are "meaningful coincidences" if they occur with no causal relationship yet seem to be meaningfully related. November 2013, Colin is 60 . He sits, with a beer and roll-up outside the Dickens Inn, St Katharine’s docks, looking at his yacht and home, his marriage of 36 years is imploding. He notes, as the photographer sets up his kit, that Frangi (Frangipani), is the second boat in the photo, blue band, the only visible bit, his cabin and loo. First we need to go back in time... November 1963. Colin is ten years old , he has no concept of education, let alone a grammar school one. On the IQ, scale his score was not good. On the emotional intelligence score: sexually abused by the babysitter, beaten up, attacked with a knife, a man asked him to hold his penis, bitten by a dog, to name few, he was even lower. No, surprise when he failed his el

Red tube is a porn site, please be patient. In part 2, I talked about our Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. Our biological or Somatic needs; Breathing, Drinking, Eating, Excreting, Sleeping and Sex. Our somatic needs are pure energy over which we have no control. If these basic needs are not met, the body is unable to function sufficiently to consider any other needs. We will kill to meet these needs. This is base chakra stuff. With our biological needs met (sex?), safety needs; security, home, employment, finance, will dominate. Anything that makes us feel unsafe, like Covid19, will activate our primal, safety and somatic needs. Our base and first chakras will be out of balance, our focus turns inwards. We become a boil waiting to burst. Maslow describes these first two levels as our Survival Needs. We return to these needs at moments of uncertainty and stress. Many of us are here right now, a boil about to explode. Our somatic need for sex creates frustration, anger, violence, dea

January 2009. Boarding Cunard's Queen Victoria leaving Southampton for New York After 30 years of marriage to Kerry, we decided time apart was needed. She went north to family. I decided to go sailing, on someone else’s boat for a change. I also decided to start this long awaited story. Kerry drove me to the cruise ship terminal in Southampton. I desperately needed an adventure, but also knew courage was required.  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, my hand luggage pops out, 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. Courage is not the absence of fear. It is embracing the fear and proceeding. At last I am free. I to rush to my steerage class cabin, lie down on the bed and use my p

Maslow's hierarchy of needs.  For self-actualisation to exist the body must be in balance. For enlightenment to exist the chakras must be in balance. Om Male suicide rate hits two-decade high in England and Wales. [Guardian 1 st September 2020] Almost 80% of all suicides are men. That’s an average of twelve men every day, one every two hours!    Well I did not, as I am writing this blog.   It did cross my mind, late 40’s and fifties, I might die, but that would have been from an excess of ‘pain relief’, in its myriad of forms, rather than intent. Add Covid19 and we have an unexploded time bomb for many men. In my previous Movember post, click here if you missed it , I talked about the Chakra system and its function in providing a balanced mind and body. Chakras are dippy hippy stuff for many of you. I did receive a lovely message following my chakra post, ‘Hi Colin, I thought your explanation of the chakras was really clear. Even for a cynic like me’. I was also a cynic for many

                                                           Original painting. Sheila Gibbons To-date, 47,742 Covid deaths have been recorded in the UK. Every year, over 48,000 men are diagnosed with prostate cancer in the UK. Please, put that in perspective for one moment. Movember 2020. I should be writing about Normanton Grammar school and Featherstone Rover but, again, I find myself distracted by a man thing. More precisely man’s shit! Movember is prostate cancer awareness month. The tradition is to grow a moustache, I’m on the case. My shit has been around from birth, it flowed effortlessly in those day. As time progressed, I was told, ‘big boys don’t cry, be strong like a man’. So, I stopped crying and tried to become the man my parents, my teachers and peer group expected. I became very good at it, too good in many respects. My shit was there in abundance, life events compounded, compacted and poisoned it further. I just didn’t share it with anyone until...  The shit hit the fan.