A Lad from Featherstone

Colin at 14. In the previous [click here] chapter I discovered I could run very fast but more to the point, the cricket and tennis sets [I won]  gave me a new found thirst for winning. My ego had arrived. The following rugby season I scored tries galore and then my life changed forevermore. But, and this is very important; please remember, behind the facade of Slam Junior (new nickname) is the shy and axiety prone Colin. Chepstow Army Apprentice College February 1967 I discovered the joy of combining 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 inf...

  Bridlington, Brid as the locals call it, is in my DNA July 1952.  The newly married couple, Betty and Clifford Lambert, South Cliff, Bridlington, East Yorkshire. [Yorkshire Post] Nine months, later 29 th  April 1953, I arrive in the world.  Dad had just taken part in the world’s first, live, televised game of Rugby League; the Cup Final, Featherstone Rover V Workington Town at Wembley. The highlights were transmitted world-wide on Pathe News, and now on YouTube. My first memory of Brid was aged 7, Featherstone Miners Welfare chartered a train to send the townsfolk and their children for their annual day at the seaside. A tuckshop bag with a sarny, bag of crisps and bottle of pop. I fell in love with trains and Brid. By the time I was thirteen,1966. we had a 4 berth van Southcliffe Caravan Park where my mum was way to busy looking after Mick 9, John 7 and Mandy 5 to pander to my needs. I would walk for miles along the beach, sit on the harbour wall dreaming ...