 On the desert road to Baghdad, did you care when the ground began to shake? Were you there, with the dead along the streets, little kids beneath old sheets? Was there time between your meets, in your chair? Did you care? Was it fair? I'm looking for a shadow, hoping for a drink, walking past an idea, trying not to think, fighting for a general, a thousand miles away, eating lousy rations while he tries to cut up pay. So Robin, for the second time today, how are you brother? I'm good, I managed to make my teeth faster than you did. Yes, so friends at home, massive welcome to the podcast, massive welcome to welcome Robin back. I've just been off and made myself a cup of tea because we've just done another podcast prior to this with Olympic, Great Britain's Olympic, I hate to use the word hope, but I think that's the expression for the Paris 2024, it was Georgina Roberts and the three of us discussed shooting, which is her shotgun shooting is her discipline. So now we're going to go again, and Robin's going to very kindly discuss his latest publication. Warrior poet, a soldier's songs. And I've had a read of this earlier, I have to say, it got a bit smoky in here because I think that's a sign you've hit the spot, Robin, isn't it? I think it is, I think it is Chris, the thing about my generation, especially when they hear about poetry, they, oh my God, don't talk to me about that. It's horrible. And they remember having to learn something at school in language that made absolutely no sense to them. And yet, in real life, you know, every day, a lot of a quote poetry, we quote Shakespeare, Richard Orr poetry, and you know, we love rhyme and we love rhythm, and sometimes it's funny and sometimes it's sad, and the joy of making up a silly limerick, for example, is great fun. But, and we love songs, and songs, you know, are really poems with music. So it's a peculiar thing, but to hit them up really, really well, it has to have emotion and emotion in words that are, that people can feel rather than remember. And it's a performance art, which is the thing about a book is that you have to try and get the whole rhythm in your head, the way it works. So I put little, I put little sentences in before saying that we're inspiring. And in some cases, it's people like Benny Hill. So you get the kind of pattern that goes with it, and sometimes it has to be done with a hard Scottish accent. And it's available on Amazon. It's only available on Amazon, but that itself publishes. Publishers are still trying to catch up on last year because of Covid. So rather than sit on it and wait, but it's fully illustrated all the way through every every two pages is fully illustrated with photographs turned into works of art. Yes, and there's one particular picture, if I can find it. I've just made a few marks here. Hang on a sec. Bear with me. Look at this wasting five minutes of our podcast. It froze for me. Was I freezing? Just for a moment, yeah. Oh, God. Yes, this picture, I believe I stood next to that. Isn't it in Reykjavik? That's it, yeah. That's where I took it, yeah. Very modern sort of modern art statue of, I'm guessing, what would have been a Viking longboat back in the day? Yeah. Yeah, and we did the whole thing in black and white to add to the mood, which I think it really does all the way through. But the illustrations are done by a wonderful illustrator called Tommy Brabham, who I met here in Prague. And between the two of us, I think we've produced something that's rather extraordinary. But, you know, there's war poems, there's love poems, there's funny poems, there's some that are a real pistachio. You know, it's something for everybody, but it's something you can leave on your coffee table and talk about the next three years. Yes, I think there's I'm just going to say here and now, friends at home, what an absolutely excellent gift to give to anyone, not just whether they've been a veteran or not, but particularly if they have, this is going to resonate. This picture caught my eye, Robin. Is that the one of my old friends, Stuart McLaughlin? Yes. He was killed just after he'd sold him out, longed him a three-barre. And I say, is he probably the only person I ever knew that I ever absolutely regarded as a hero, a great friend. I read all about his exploits, his bravery. Oh, God, putting myself on the spot here in that wonderful book written by former para. I usually have my books on my shelf to jog my memory. Vince Bramley. No, I don't know. Bramley wrote a book. I think it was called Something Along the Lines of Descent into Hell. For anybody watching who wants to read it, go into the notes below this video and you'll see my shop, Christopher's shop, and that book is in my shop. It's just basically a direct link that takes you to Amazon. Lots of people said this gentleman should have won the Victoria Cross. Did I get that right? Yeah, I agree with that entirely. If anybody deserved a VC in the Falklands, it was Stuart McLaughlin. He fought tirelessly on that mountain, taking over when the higher command was getting killed, leading the younger soldiers and setting the example as they took out the enemy trenches, took out a lot of enemy and then, sadly, ultimately, I think even towards the end of that battle, lost his own life. No, he was wounded and he was walking back to the medical aid station and an artillery shell, a random, killed him. God, awful. So how should we approach this, Robin? Shall I just quickly do a quick, not praise, that's the wrong word, but I love this piece, Dawn's Early Light. I won't read all of it. And I hope I can do it justice, if not, Robin, feel free to take over. But for endless years, we huddled in a dark night and defended ourselves from the cold. I'm probably not giving this the right cadence, but from the cold concealing from the cold, concealing ourselves in silent fear from the demons of hate hidden in the shadows. We waited, hoping beyond all hope that a new day would come after the long, long night, a night of years. What came into my mind was when we, when we were hunter-garras and we would have lived in caves and just that sheer reassurance that daybreak brought when the sun came over the horizon and it was no longer dangerous animals prowling around and terrible cold to deal with. And also I've read a lot of life raft stories like Stephen Callaghan's 76 Days Adrift, very brilliant book, folks. I think that's in my in my shop. And that's it, that's it. It's about holding on when everything seems lost and holding on and holding on, enduring the bad times. I want to say about people who are in despair. Hold on. Yeah. Yes. So it's about that. And it's the last poem in the book. So, you know, there's some very profound stuff in there. There's some really funny stuff in there, too. Because, you know, you don't want to be all boom and gloom and misery. You know, the one on, I think it's on page two, which is a useless banker. You know, that's a funny one. I can read that for you quickly. Go for it. You're going to do it more just just than I probably did. Yeah. It says it's a simple poem about excuses. Useless banker. You can't blame me for what I do. It's not my fault I work with forms. I tried for top celebrity, but ended up making people fee. I want to blame my mental health. Perhaps I'm lacking mental wealth. I couldn't cope. I couldn't work. I called my boss a stupid jerk. I couldn't wait, despite the shapes and drugs I took, but on the brakes. I didn't learn to read and write because my attitude was shaped. I couldn't go for a position work inflames my skin condition. I think that I should get more breaks. I think my mum should make me cakes. I think that I'd deserve much more. I really I'm really worth the pay of four. It's not my fault. I'm not a banker. I'm really God made me a useless. I think we all saw that that line coming. Yeah. I'm this one, I think it's going to touch you. Deeply in a few people's heart. I haven't got my glasses on, but about the sinking of the Segalahad. Bluff Cove in 1982. Memories of the weather clearing, the sun shining and the blood flowing in the water. And the beauty of this, it's it's so simple. It's both novel and and and just the beauty of this is. The simplicity of this is beautiful, I think. Segalahad, great ships, great seas, great skies. Blue skies, red ships, red skins, red seas. Yes. And that was, um. Oh, no, it's gone. It's the Welsh Gods, you know, the Jets came in, bombed them all around the ship. Yes, I was just trying to think of the Royal Marine's officer's name who was absolutely incandescent about it, because I think he was in charge of amphibious landing and he told the Welsh Gods to get off or apologies if it wasn't the Welsh Gods, he told, but he told he tried to organise and getting ashore and getting dug in. And that's right. That's exactly what happened. The Royal Marines are on shore, two paro on shore with them. But the Marines sent out the flat platform to bring the truth to shore before dawn or just after dawn. And they, the commander of the guards officer in charge said, I'll bring my men ashore when I want to. And a short time later, the Jets came in and hit the ship with the bombs and locked a lot of men, a lot of men. Should say hello to my friend, Simon Weston. Simon, if you ever get to watch this, very graciously came on the on the podcast. What an incredible, incredible human being. Yeah, there's a lot of good work for other people who really does. Can you read this one to us, Robin, page 39? That's a picture a lot of us dads will relate to. Yeah, that's a that's a photograph that my wife took just after I got back from the Falklands. My first son, Alex, was born 10 days after the surrender and that's me holding him and it was called first meeting in the in the Marines, Robin, we'd say, get a haircut. In fact, get two haircuts. First meeting. Hello, here we are both with our roles. My father, your son, a joining of souls. Yes, and that last line, I think is where some fathers fall down, isn't there? You know, there's that that bond between a father and his son is so powerful for that little boy. And it's a commitment, it's a commitment, Robin, isn't it? Yeah, I wrote about it back in my first book, Fighting Scared, my autobiography, and I said I felt that somebody had joined a piece of something joined between us, like a cord joined between us that could never be broken. If it was, it would be one of the most painful experiences I could ever ever imagine. You know, and that's the same with all my children. Yeah, I sat when I worked in Mozambique, a place we both both worked in. I was there as a that I was actually there as a development instructor, but my role at the top, my role was a teacher in a street children's school. And I sat on the beach in Nicarla, Nicarla Porto, which was near to the village we worked in. And I was there, one of my students, Shampa, obviously a child and being a street child, I said, well, you know, what what happened to your dad? And he didn't answer. And when I sort of looked, I could see he was trying. I was going to set me off now. He was trying not to burst into tears. And he said, you know, my turn. Gerard Grandi, like killed in a big war. And even though, unfortunately, I've still got my father. And I just knew the how tragic that, you know, to lose your dad, the the one person a boy looks up to more than he's going to look up to more than anyone else on the planet to have them taken away and taken away by war. Gar, we were both in tears, Robin. It was it was awful. Absolutely awful. I was in Nicarla on Christmas 1990 or eighty nine. I was part of that war. I was a major in Frolimo, working out of Nampoula in the north. And at Christmas, we drove to the sea, which was a bit risky, but we decided to go for it because we were very short of food and there was plenty of food on the coast. And we got we got on the coast there and managed to get some fresh fish and some meat and some even some champagne and some beer and me and a guy called Roger Bram, we set up at the coast and we're going to have Christmas Day, having a barbecue on the beach by the sea, looking out at the ocean rather than the situation in land where there was a pretty tough war going on starvation. And as soon as we arrived, there was nobody there. And then people started to gather around us wanting a piece of what we had. And I got quite upset because I like this is the one day of the year where I want something for just for me and you people. And I was getting quite upset about it and quite angry. And a mother sat down with a little boy and she unwrapped some newspaper and she had some bread in and she gave some bread to this little boy. And there was me trying not to share my champagne and not share me barbecue and get rid of these people. And the little baby boy who's about three walked up to me and offered me a piece of his bread. Muslim philosophy, isn't it? Or Muslim way, as you share half half of Christians. But it was the bridge had been visited by the ghost of Christian. Yeah. Oh, as Western as Robin, we get these wake up calls when we go abroad. I mean, Mozan be good example. Sort of what is it? Like a. It's a mix, isn't it? There's kind of the witchcraft kind of thing going on there, which is very serious. And I met with witch doctors while I was there and met people. Just took it so seriously. Then you've got the Christian influence. And then, of course, you've got the Muslim influence. But you get in a car with, you know, someone's. You're driving down the road. You see some hitchhikers. You pick them up. It's a woman and a baby or a man and a woman. One of them's got the malaria, full blown malaria, and they're heading to the hospital to try to get some chloroquine or whatever it is. And they're they're shaking, but they're still smiling. Yeah, and they get there. They're one bread out for the day. And the first thing to do is rip it in half and give you half. And it. That's right. As a country that I was very sad to come home from. Yeah, yeah, incredible place. I was in tears when I left. The sharing, the ability to enjoy the good things in life every single day because death is so close and you see death every single day, not just for war, but from disease, from starvation. When I had my own, I had in the south in Coromana, I had my own troops. And on a cold night, we would have two men dead from malaria on a regular basis. She wake up in the morning, who died of malaria last night. So, yeah, it's it's very different. You can't tell a blind man what a tolerance is. People have to experience it. But the beauty of people that live for today and can be at the smallest of things. And then you come home and it's a hell of a shock to find that somebody says she's traumatised because the nanny had to take a day off or the milkman didn't come. You know, I hate when I've been out travelling the world and experiencing this incredible hospitality, which I've had in eighty five countries now. And you get back to bloody London airport or somewhere and you speak to the guy in baggage or whatever to get you back or what. And I excuse me, mate, do you know that where I can get the bus to? Yeah, what won't is to I know this guy's got an ego problem, but it's still like you just want to grab that person say, I wish you'd fucking just been where I've been and seen the out of poverty and the kids dying in front of your eyes. They just look at you and what's your point? Like I said, blind men and blind men and colours, you know, they don't care. You've got in Britain today, I find that everybody's so densely packed in. There's an every everybody's wound up by social media and by the national media as well and made to feel anxious all the time. And they forget how to sing and they forget how to dance and they forget how to sit around as a family and share food and laugh and take the mickey out of one another and not take everything so seriously. And how can you have humour if every word has to be taken seriously and disassembled and turned into something that is was never intended to be? So, yeah, British society, people complain about them, their mental health a lot of the time, but it's the engagement that they have with society through a camera rather than by sitting at a table. People say things on a camera or on the Internet that they would never dare say to somebody in the same room. Why do they do it? Because they feel safe to be as rude and horrible as they wish. And people remember the frowny faces, not the happy faces. You know, so chill out, sing more, you know, make a fool of yourself, have a laugh. Yeah, I was at the we actually lived. Was it? Nicala Porto was the city, wasn't it? We lived in Muzvani Byro, which just I think Byro is Portuguese for village right on the cliff overlooking that beautiful. Was it the Indian Ocean or the Mozambique Channel? Yeah, that's it. And at weekends, we had a friend who was a sort of aid worker there. I actually know he was in customs at the port and he rocked up in his Land Rover because we didn't have transport to take us out to one of the beaches, not not every weekend, but did this five or six times. And I'm not sure if it's Niharangi Beach or whether that's I'm getting the name wrong there. But I was fishing with my Hungarian friend, Joe. And I'd taken my backpack off. And amongst the various things in there was a mask and snorkel. My stepfather had given me before I left the UK and went, A, our son, you take that one. And he was a lovely, lovely man. Dave died, died very, very, very young, tragically. And he was very, very even incredibly ill at that time, dying of leukemia. So the fact he'd given me this mask was a special thing. So I took my backpack, my day sack off, put it down on the rocks, walk to the edges you do and cast out. The next thing Joe said, Chris, look. And I looked over. Two locals. And I'd wondered why I'd seen these black faces popping up in, you know, the scrub in Mozambique, it's thick, thick thorn scrub, isn't it? It's almost almost impenetrable. And I looked over my shoulder. These guys legged it out of the bush. Ran across these razor sharp rocks. They were razor sharp. I was a westerner. You never you could never have gone bare foot, foot, foot on them. Obviously, I have my, my, my sandals on. Hopped across these rocks as if they were nothing. Grabbed my bag and he was off. My first thought was that diving mask from my, from my stepdad. And as you show. Hold the fishing rod and I tore after them, Robin, probably a bit of a silly thing to do by charging to that scrub a hundred mile an hour. The thorns were just ripping or ripping my clothes apart. And I'm screaming in Portuguese, I'm going to kill you, right? In the hope. That having in a cunha, so a westerner, shouting, I'm going to kill you and not giving up would just be enough for them to drop the bag and learn, behold, I got about 30 feet into this thing. I by the time I got those completely torn up and there was my bag and I lifted the flat. It was all still in there, including my bottle of rum. So yes, yes, Mozambique, incredible. Justing an incredible place to visit when when you and I were there as war torn and smashed up and everywhere stunk of can we say you you know what, because obviously there were no toilets when was when the Portuguese left, they filled the sewers with concrete, didn't they, as in in almost in spite of the of the locals so there were no sewers or anything. They're trying about feet and we're going over rocks. I used to take my soldiers for runs in the morning inside the inside the minefield perimeter and they should take their boots off to go running because the boots were for parades. Yeah. You know, so when they're in uniform, probably they put their boots on, but they preferred it without them. But their their soles of their feet, when we finished the run, they would be pulling camel thorns out of their feet and just, you know, no big deal. Unbelievable. We used to hold football matches at the school and the lads would rock up. Only half of them had training shoes. Most of the trainers were donated. So when you go in a shoe shop and you buy a new pair and they say, do you want to leave your old pair here? That's that's where they go. They get given to some aid organisation who then gets them out to such countries. So only half the guys would have training, a quarter rather. And what they do is one would wear the right and one would wear the left. Doesn't matter even if you were a right foot striker, that you might have a left just just the left. The kid, the football the the kids played with not not not in this case of a proper football for these kind of Sunday league matches. The children in the school, they get a carrier bag, twist it up, wrap it around itself, get another carrier bag, twist it up until they had a football sized clump of carrier bags that they then bound with with a string. And that they had nothing else, Robyn. Well, I don't I don't need to tell you, do I? They didn't have any Western toys, nothing. Some of them when they're worried about. Illness, when they're worried about their family, when they're worried about enough food, when they're, you know, when they're worried, maybe the roof's coming down because you've got a hurricane or something like that. You know, they don't have time to worry about their mental health. They only worry about what's really, really important on a day to day basis. If you ask them something along the lines of, you know, how do you feel? They will tell you how they feel in that moment. They wouldn't be worrying about how they're going to feel tomorrow or how something's affecting them. They would just they're just getting on and living life. And it's not a bad idea. Yes, exactly. One of the poems in your book you might have to give me a steer or I'll be here forever. It's the one about the mother, wasn't it? And we were discussing it earlier. Yeah, Unspoken Love. Yeah, what page are we on just so I can read them? Yeah, it's near the back. It's going towards the end of the book, Unspoken Love. And it's about my it's my mother died when she was 37. She had me when she was 17. And so, yeah, it's page 89. And when you're a selfish young person are getting on with your life and growing up, you don't have much appreciation for your parents. And she was gone before I was old enough to appreciate that. And I grew up in an environment where we didn't touch, we didn't shake hands, we didn't express our feelings for one another. And, you know, so the poem is called Love Unspoken. And it's about how we felt for one another, but we didn't say it, we didn't express it. That's about that, you know. Yes, I'm not going to read any unless Robin particularly wants to. You're a good reader, you're a good reader. You're a good reader. Well, funny you should say that. I was in a library group once when I was a youth, no, I think it was when I was a substance misuse specialist. So basically a drug worker used to go to this organisation because one of my clients used to attend. And I would go there to sort of shuffle around him for one of an incorrect one of the proper term. And in this slide, we said, right, who's going to read the book next? And someone said, Chris, would you? Of course, I was just getting into writing my own books then and that sort of thing and sometimes you can really nail it. You can get, you know, the pauses in the right place, clarity of voice. Yeah, really just. And another time you when you try talking into one of these to record your audio book, I think you sound like an absolute plank. You sound much better if you're stood up because your lungs work better. And if you've written it yourself, obviously, the emotion and the depth and the rhythm is exactly how you want it to be rather than somebody else doing it. I mean, one of the joys, I mean, I broke my neck when I was 54 and I was having some real problems with recovery, not in terms of paralysis, but in terms of constant headaches. And so I thought I'd take my mind off it by going to university. I couldn't teach karate anymore. So I went off to university as an undergrad at 56. And I did creative writing with English literature. The one thing in the creative writing that really gripped me was that I knew absolutely nothing about poetry and its different forms and its different makeups and how it works and how clever it can actually be. And although we use it, we don't understand. We can sing a song. We don't understand how to write the song or what to use it. And it really gripped me. And so I wanted to use some of that three years of academia in warrior soldiers songs to try and express some of the things I've learned. And it really is a labor of love. It's not a commercial product. You know, write something about bombs and guns and gat and bash them and smash them. And, you know, you're going to get an audience. But I'm hoping that there's a certain clientele out there take the time to sit down and try to just see what that what what what it's about. It's it's got things about suicide, deaths of my friends in war. It's got that hard attitude as well as the sort of morose attitude. It's got that. Come on, get stuck in the atom. Passion, you know, it's got some of that in there as well, because there needs to be a balance. But yeah, it's very much a labor of love. It will. I want to talk about literature and your depth of knowledge and that sort of thing. Even you mentioned the sagas later on in your book, the kind of the Norsk or Icelandic texts that that is how they how they remembered history, isn't it? But just this. This love unspoken. So this is the poem about your mother. And it's really funny. Well, it's not funny. But grief is a funny thing. Because I I choose I try not to do it. I, you know, I've had some close people die to me. Most in just tragic circumstances. My best mate Lee drowned when we were on holiday in. Portugal. That's a funny situation of being stood on a beach with your best mates, dead body at your feet. Didn't even I hadn't even met his parents, Robin, it was just. But I'm just like, OK, hey, let's move on. Next, you know, it and I just try and celebrate life and I don't want to go there, you know, and I certainly don't want to. But dying out on that sort of shit, you know, and have it be my my my moniker that, oh, this is I don't deal with it. I move on. I tend to have one bloody good cry that comes about a month later, triggered by something. Lee triggered me because he'd left a tea stain in my kitchen. I remember saying to him, oh, and months later, it was still on it was on a plastic bag and I just looked at it. And then it was God, the floodgates open. Well, you cry for yourself because the grief is your experience, the person's gone and gone. So you're crying for yourself. Your loss, it's your loss. Not there when my. My mum died. It was a it was a funny situation. And I hope to our young people who might be watching this, you can maybe take something from this. But one of my best experiences as a toddler stroke child. I was going shopping with my mum. And I think you say here, we held on to the the pram or whatever. I remember going shopping with my mum and come on, son, you know, come on, Chris, but and it was such a lovely feeling. I'm with my mum, right? And yet it's got older and went through lots of upheaval. I think three, three separations led to divorce. I won't even go into the depths of what went on, but it was. It wasn't wasn't very pleasant. And off the back of that, there were lots of remarriages. Way more than you need in this life. Hopefully you can do it in a one of folks. I won't even get married. I've got a girlfriend and she's just awesome, right? Anna waited forty five years for her. But I didn't always hear off with my mum and we would just it was all personality issues, Robin, you know, she had a lot going on. I don't I to this day, I couldn't tell you why, because that generation would never discuss it with you. Right, my son, I'll tell him everything. Well, he's young. I don't obviously go too deep, but he's going to know all my faults. Right, all the stupid things I've done. If I if I do wrong, I'm going to say sorry, right? And he gets I love you 50 times a day, along with 50 hugs and about 500 kisses every day, probably doing this a bit wrong, folks. But maybe I'm overcompensating. A one hug off my dad as a kid one. And it was when he come back from the pub a bit, a bit pissed. No, he's not slagging my dad off. This is how things very often were back then. People not in touch with their feelings and all kinds of like bullshit etiquette, really, that people conform to. And it was just all a bit silly. But so there I am two days after or three days after my mum died. And I'm so glad that we got it together in the end. And I was able to nurse her. She she died of asbestos poisoning. She was a nurse in in Charing Cross Hospital in London. After the war, the place was full of asbestos because of the rebuilding from the bombing. There she was trying to do her best for people as a nurse, poisoners poisoning herself as she worked there. And that Misa Filioma, you usually you're dead in three months. She actually went on for a year. So we had a bit more time time with her than most people get. And in that time, there was no Arjibarjee. There wasn't there wasn't going to be any arguments. It was just me and my mum. And as I think I said to Robin, two days after she died, I went to the house. I was met with more cards than I've ever seen in my life. So I start to read them, you know, one at a time. And it's. And it was to her husband at the time. It was Chuck called Paul Paul. Barbara was just the loveliest woman we ever had the pleasure to meet. Every time I walked past her showing shops, you know, she would wave every time I took a pair of jeans in. She'd just take them up for Robin. I'm reading about a woman I never knew. I never knew this, you know. So I'd encourage anybody out there. Don't get over whatever you're trying to understand your parents, because if they're a bit knobby, it's probably because they've had a bit of a shit end of the stick themselves, right? And they ain't going to change. It's just it seems to be the nature of things. People have a lot of pride and, well, get rid of your pride, you know, give your parents a hug, tell them that you love them and, you know, don't do what I did, which is find out two days after they'd gone. Mum died, God, years ago now, Robin, but I think it's only just. I'm only just starting to think about it now. So thank you for your. Thank you for your poem, you know. I hope somebody can engage with it. You know, you've you've you've achieved what all writers dream of, which is you've got one person who's engaged and that's all you need, isn't it? Anyone else is a bonus. Well, I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm proud of it, regardless. It's it's a work of art and, you know, it has a limited audience. But I'm glad it's out there. I think I think it's worth it. Yes. You're obviously very well read or where there's lots of books out there on there, so that's kind of subjective. But is it how did you get in? Have you always been a reader? Yeah, I've always loved books. I love books more than television. I think being a soldier, you know, I didn't the idea of going into TV and not being able to watch the program you want, because the other lads are watching top of the pops or something. You know, so you I can I can escape in books. I remember being stuck up in the barracks in Northern Ireland, you know, reading Leon Eurus is Trinity and then gradually getting into more and more books and being in the jungle. And, you know, once it gets dark in the jungle, you don't move. So you like a little candle and then you can't sleep. You know, maybe not that tired. So you like a candle and you get this big book that's going to last you for the four or five weeks that you're there. And so you start to read more and more. And nowadays, I tend to have about six, six books on the go at the same time, but different books. So I'm reading what am I reading? I'm reading Barack Obama's A Promised Land. I'm reading The Rise and Fall of Communism. I'm reading a Stephen Hawking's book. I can't remember the title of and I leave them around the house. And the most difficult one I leave in the toilet. And they're different books, but they're words, words of power. If you're eloquent, I mean, so many people out there want to say something, but won't say anything at all because they don't feel that they have the vocabulary to express themselves. So most of the ones express themselves to me, haven't got the vocabulary. Don't seem to bother them. That's right. You know, so there are people that really have something important they want to say. If you say it for them, then they're really pleased because they are. Yes, that's what I wanted to say. That's what I meant. He said it for me good for him. And reading, reading people, you know, I mean, I'm a great admirer of Barack Obama and I'm a great admirer of Boris Johnson as well. Reading the eloquence in their language and some of it's written for them. But it means a great deal to me. And I read, take little notes of how I wanted to say it. That's I'm going to say it in the future because words are power. We're all people control us with their words and they lift our emotions and they drop our emotions. It's what theater does. It's what music does. So and poetry is emotion in words. So that connection. So a lot of us get frustrated because we're angry about something, but we can't express it. So we do it with swear words or frustration because we can't actually say what it is that's making us angry in a way that won't make the other person angry. You know, so, you know, we rely on our body language or telepathy. You've perfected the art, haven't you? You have replying to people. I've noticed that on your social media. You're you're always very gracious, but quite direct. And and yes, I think it's good. I it's it's a difficult place to be when you're in the public eye and you've got social media because. Is that your page where people come to celebrate you because they enjoy what you do, what you say, how how you enable their lives? Yeah, I mean, I've got the old why wise old paratrooper stuff that goes out, you know, which is what I named my little trilogy of books, wise old paratrooper books. But I kept coming out with these little short maxims, these little short saying that would carry a message. And so, you know, the wise old paratrooper tag started to attach to me. And then you start to get people asking you in private or messenger for advice. And many times they start by attacking you. So they're like, you shouldn't have said this, you should have done that. You're an epitome of someone, you know, and then you start to talk back to them in a reasonable and understanding way. And in some cases, not in all, in some cases, you end up being their counsellor or their guide. So that's that's quite humbling and quite nice to be able to use your language skills with with a certain amount of benefit to others. Well, that's teaching as well. That's what teachers do. And I love teaching. So there's an aspect of teaching to those comments. But when you come across people who open an engagement on social media with an insult, then it's best just to block and delete. Oh, block and delete. And occasionally I get I'm in a bad mood or, you know, something I'm not too happy on that particular day and I'll send a cutting comment back. And then I'll feel bad about it and I'll delete it. So best not to engage. Yes, the the more the bigger your audience becomes, it really starts to become a juggling thing because. Am I going to reply to a guy? That's just been rude about either myself or my guests. Right. And it's and if I take the might be 15 minutes to get the reply to mean what you want it to mean, then it doesn't end now. Very often, Robin, it's a Chris, I'm so sorry. Yeah, love your podcast, mate. Love what you do, right? It's the same when I meet someone in public. And I happen to know. What they've been saying in, you know, behind my back and it is. Are you Chris full? Oh, I love your OK. And yeah, I flew all the way to Hong Kong to have one of those those type meetings. Believe that's quite that you walk into a. A bar in Hong Kong and you just walk up to the guy that's been slagging you off on social media for the last six months, calling you a basically a water or whatever. Not not not that I but when people do that, when people do that, it says so much to the public about them. It says nothing about you. And there's there's one individual in the whole world who spends an awful lot of his time and energy doing that to me. And all he's doing is telling everybody what he is rather than what I am. So, you know, you've just got to get a bit of thick skin. Then just ignore it. It really is it can be tough. Who the hell would want to be a politician? Who the hell? What I was. What I'm sort of thinking now is it's like, dude, I could spend 50 minutes replying. You wrote if you're going to be one of these people that just comes back and you haven't completely haven't either listened to what I said or been gracious. Sorry, dude, you're gone. It's because I could be with my son and then it gets to the point where I've been where who should you be replying to? And it gets hard because some people are very kind. They say, Chris, and they'll write a whole thing. And at the end, I say, look, please don't reply to me. I know you're busy and they get it, right? Others send me 30 video links. Videos are an hour and a half each. And I think you don't really understand what what the life of a content producer is like. What it takes to to try to try to make a success of something in this world without having a, you know, outside of a job. I don't have a time to watch a half hour video that I want to watch, let alone to watch 32 hour videos that I don't get me wrong, folks. I appreciate the connection. But it does get to the point where who should you be replying to? Because my boy comes first, Robin, you know, my boy comes first. And I've already spent too much time. Yeah. And I get I get people complaining that I don't respond to them. And so I'll put up a general post saying, guys, you know, I'd love to respond to everybody. But sometimes I'll get I'll get six or seven hundred different comments in a day. And, you know, I can't. But I do scan through them to see if it's anything of, you know, that I I think is of great importance, but you can't reply to everybody much as you'd like to. And the same goes for people who will send you links. Well, if you've got a link, stick it up on stick it up on Facebook. Don't send it to me on Messenger, you know, because it's not enough hours in the day and I've got a life, too. Yeah, I'm having to start to get team members involved now. But I've got wonderful people on the on the on the team because there just there isn't enough hours in the day is there. That it's not it becomes not fair on you in the end, because I can sit here, get to the end of a day. I might have been up since, well, this morning I was up. Four. Outrunning, I think, by half four shower for five. Then I'll sit down at the computer and I can still be here at 10 o'clock at night. And I've not done one single piece of work. I've just spent it replying to this. They see the emails that just keep coming, the comments, keep coming, the messages. And you've got to ask yourself, hang on, what am I? Do I produce stuff or do I just don't think there's a definitely think there's a way to get a balance? I can understand people like the Joe, Joe Rogan and who. Yeah, he just. Doesn't reply to any think he's got. You need to when you get to that level of celebrity, you just need to let people know that, you know, you're you're seeing their stuff, but you haven't got time to get back to them and carry on and not worry about it because five minutes later they've written it and they're not worried about you. Yeah, and if somebody's doing something negative, sometimes they're just getting some kind of satisfaction prompting a response from you anyway. People people who put up an insult shouldn't expect you to read the next sentence because I don't. If it starts with you're a twat, you know, then then that's it. It's blocked and deleted. The rest of it doesn't count. It's very sad that there's so many unhappy people in this modern life is creating more of this. There was a time if you engage, interact with another person, you had to be polite. It's just the way it was. If you didn't get one of those and then you went, you know what, I'm actually going to be a bit more polite in it. But yeah, funny, funny life, isn't it? Well, it's something you mentioned earlier on about doing your ten secrets for success and there's exactly that point in it. You know, you know, don't let people use your good manners against you. Did you say in the past you were watching Top of the Pops? Oh, yeah, definitely. Abba. Abba. Well, yeah, I get that. I just I would pitch you more watching cooking, cooking programs. And I had to watch what everybody else had to watch. You had a television room with one television in it that you were allowed to watch on a Wednesday night. And you went in there and put Top of the Pops was on. And that's when I was a boy soldier. And of course, you know, 15, 16 year old boys and Abba, they go together very, very well. And that's what everybody wanted to watch and probably need to. My day was all videos. So can you imagine trying to watch the watch till the end of a film when your guard shift changes every four hours? It's almost almost a bit necky to put a film on because you're going to watch it. But half of these guys are only going to get only going to watch. Well, before videos, we had books. One of the books I read as the boy soldier was The Exorcist. And, you know, I was 16, 16 and a half when I was reading it. Scary book, scary book to read. I mean, the film, OK, everyone was kicking up hell about the film and people parading outside cinemas and saying how terrible and destructive it was. But 16 year old reading that book. Yeah, I remember that. That was that was quite a book. But a book, you put it down, you pick it up, you put it down, you pick it up. That's why it's something real that you can hold on to as well, rather than a book, you know, much as I sell my books on Kindle, not worry a poet because because it's illustrated and you can't really get those illustrations across very well on Kindle. But so that's going to be that's going to be what it is. Now, that's going to be what it is. That photograph was taken on Mount Longdon. It's an artistic expression of a photograph. But that was taken on Mount Longdon by one of my opera two sergeants called Graham Colbeck, and he's credited at the beginning of the book for that. So it's an actual it's not an it's not an imaginary scene. It's a real scene. I just I'd encourage anybody to read Vince Brownlee's book. I think it's called Excursion to Hell. As I said, I'm not sure if I said it in this podcast or the one before. But it's if you look at the description below this video that says Christopher's shop and all the books in the podcast you can find there. And there's also all the books that I've loved in my life that really have helped shape the person that I've become. Someone that's just massively wanted to see the whole world in latter life who's taken up the sort of extreme endurance stuff. It's all off the back of our reader book and go, I want to do that. Yeah, Vince, Vince Brownlee's book about mainly centres on the attack on Mount Longdon. And it's just an eye opener, a real, real eye opener. Yeah, that's, you know, that was that was that was real soldiering without any doubt at all. You know, I mean, all soldiering where people have got guns on the other side and shoot them at you as real soldiering. I'm not putting anything down, but it's the last time that the Air Force, the Navy and the Army were involved in together in combined operations and in a scenario that was straight out of, in some ways, the Second World War. It really was. Yeah, bloody RAF had to do some work, didn't they? Everybody did, mate. I when I got picked up, I parachuted into the sea and got picked up by the Andromeda and the morale and the spirit of the Matlows, the Navy guys was tremendous. I mean, I'm a lousy seaman. You know, I just want one of them gave me his bunk to lay on because I get seasick very, very easily and brought me tea and everything. You weren't with Bob Shepard by any chance, were you? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I spoke to I was on the phone to Bob a couple of days ago. He's been in New York now. Yeah, I'm in touch with him, yeah. He said he's come with friends. He's coming on the show in a couple of weeks time. He said, yeah, we parachuted into the sea. I'm like, well, slow, slow, slow, slow down. Well, you can't do this on the podcast. You've got to do. Want to tell us a bit more about that, Robin, because it really sounds. Well, we we were coming towards the end of the campaign and we were supposed to go into Argentina and on a one way mission to take out the jets that were sinking our ships. But the mission finally got canceled. So our commanding officer managed to get us permission to fly down and do another mission coming into possibly coming into Port Stanley from the rear. But so there were two aircraft with sixty five as their soldiers bursting to get into the war still flying down one of the aircraft's refueling nozzle broke. So that one had to turn back to now there's thirty five of us. And we get down there and all our equipment has been prepared by the ref in one some boxes to go out the back on heavy drop parachutes. So we're all standing there waiting to jump out in dry suits. Out goes the out goes all our equipment and all the parachutes come on. And so and we follow it out and all our equipment is bombing the ships that are waiting in the fleet to pick us up. So there we are. You know, thirty five men from B Squadron twenty two SES arrived to take part in the war and our kit. Most of our kit goes to the bottom of the ocean. We get picked up and put on the ship. But the Argentinians, fair to fair, the Argentinians heard that these thirty men from B Squadron twenty two SES had arrived and two days later they surrendered. So job done. Hey, they're only human, mate. I tell you what, if any country wants to get kitted out for for for for a conflict, just hoover up the bottom of the South Atlantic, isn't it? I think all of our a lot of our equipment went went down there, sadly. You know, a lot of a lot of good ships, a lot of good men as well. And a lot of good good Chinooks, wasn't it? Well, the Atlantic conveyor was first hit when it was in San Carlos, and went down with our sea areas. Yeah. Yeah, incredible, incredible. We do our ten points. Yes, let's bring this part to a close, because I'll put that out as a as a as a as a as a separate one. So, Robin, here's the book, folks, to our dear friends at home. Warrior poet, a soldier's songs highly, highly recommended. Give this to definitely give this to any veteran. And now that would be something that they will will treasure. But as I said earlier, I think it's to be appreciated by by everybody. If I could ask you all at home, please like and subscribe so we can keep keep building the channel and have more enlightening and educating chats like that, that would be wonderful. And Robin, until the next time.