 So I did my count, looked up, wasn't good, looked back down, looked back up. Don't worry, if you can't lower your container, if you're thinking about it, I'm going to drop my burger on his head, you know. I was on ship at the time, we were going to be the first ship to set sail in HMS VINCIPLE. And I would go down and he'd like to turn and look at me, really, I'd sinister. Steve, how are you brother? Good mate, good Chris, how are you? Yeah, I'm fine mate and I thoroughly enjoyed your book. No, thanks mate. Good, glad you liked it. Yeah, I did. I get asked to read an awful lot of books, so you're quite privileged really, because I've got 50 books on my shelf from guests and all this kind of stuff. And I just haven't got time to read 50 books in, I haven't even got time to read one or two books. But I thought, no, no, I'm going to read something military, something memoir, that's the kind of stuff I like. Forget all the bloody theoretical books. And yeah, I really enjoyed it. Did it take you long to write? No mate, that one didn't take very long to be fair, that one took me about, I think that was like a couple of months or something. It was pretty quick. It's all sort of memories, you know, and it's all short stories, so it's pretty quick mate. Most of those stories are like a couple of pages long, aren't they? Yeah, that's good. It's a good style though, isn't it? I mean, we call them dits in the Marines, we call them dits. Dits for them? Yeah. God, I should have put my glasses on. But I like the bit, is that a para thing to make people climb trees? Well, crows live in trees and they squawk, something like that, sorry. I don't know mate, it was a thing for us that day. Poweredges, obviously you're a crow. What are you in there, Marines? You're not called crows, are you? Nigs or something? Nods, nods. Nods, which sounds for, I don't even know. Just for nodding off, because you fall asleep all the time. Yeah, well, Joe Crow in Poweredges was a crow, so that sergeant was like, you fucking crows. What the crows do? They squawk sergeant and he's like, yeah, where do crows live? They've been trees and he's like, right, yeah, see that tree over there? He didn't get up that tree and it was mental, mate. Yeah, I tried to run, you know, when you try and pretend to run fast but run slow. Bluffing the ticket, I don't want to look up. The tree was rotten, mate, just pulling out the tree, you know, it's crazy. Yeah, I've heard it before because I think it was a mate of mine called George and he was T.A. Parrot, whatever that is. Yeah, yeah, 10 Parrot. Yeah, 10 Parrot, yeah. And I was served with him on shit and he said to me one day, he said, you know, fucking Parrots, man. They're just like pointing to a tree and saying, right, everyone up that tree. Brilliant, brilliant. Yeah, and there's a lot of us as well trying to get up the same tree. Yeah, I mean, have you ever seen that film? It's called Ongback. Yeah, mate. Yeah, the tie boxing. Yeah, and at the beginning, the whole village, all the young men in the village climb up the tree and then start trying to push each other out. Good film, that. Yeah, yeah, really good. Yeah, I love all that sort of stuff. Yeah, these stupid stuff, mate. Yeah, crows live in trees. Yeah, we're all up the tree. The bloke's running. The small lads are up the tree real quick and right climbing to the top and just, it must have looked mental, mate. Everyone. Right, 30, 40, boys. There is that focus, isn't it? If you're airborne, the focus is on heights, isn't it? And there is, that's kind of like a theme is what I'm trying to say. Whereas I suppose if you're in, if you come from the Marines or the Navy, it's more, it's more water, isn't it? More amphibious. Yeah, we've got the Tranasium, which is like the aerial obstacle course. You've got something similar in the Commando course. That's like 45 feet in the air. And when I did it, I was pretty sure there wasn't really many safety nets when I did it. Obviously, that was a long time ago, but there's still lots of dangerous, even if that has got safety nets. It's really mental, you know, running along and it's got a seesaw on it and the seesaw is like slightly on the piss. So you jump onto the seesaw and it, because it's tilted slightly, obviously it makes you want to go off to the slide. You've got to do all these jumps and grab on the ropes and walk on the shuffle bars and that. There's a fair bit of that. And I know I didn't do depo in Aldershot. In Aldershot, I used to get Joe's up and over the bridges and I'm walking across the top of the bridges, not in the training area. But yeah, you can't be too far. There's quite a few, like a fair of heights in one. I suppose it's different jumping out of a plane. You've done it and you've jumped here. Yes. When I did my jumps course, it was the Gurkhas that were bottlenecked. Yeah. Quite funny really that everyone thinks the Gurkhas, these fearless warriors, but now you get them all up in a plane and they were literally doing that thing, holding on to the door. Yeah. And the PJs were trying to throw, this one particular guy, I think he was a sergeant and they were just trying to throw him out and he was, he wouldn't let go of the airframe. Then he fell down onto his ass and he had his feet against the door and his hands against it and they finally managed to lever him out and just... I mean, it's not the way you really want to exit an aircraft, is it? It's not going to be stable, is it? They're like that on your arms and they're like slapping their arms down like that and holding them in the door. Yeah, I've seen a few guys jumping and they were really, really scared. But it takes a lot more bottle in my opinion. If you're really scared of jumping, then you still jump. It takes a lot more courage than it does for the person who didn't really that bothered about it. Yeah. They keep a book, I'm pretty sure they... I know they used to keep a book in Bryson Orton of all the refusals. So they don't want to increase the jump. There's a record of it somewhere, you don't want to be in that book. No, no, that's not good regimental history, is it? No. What year did you do your jumps? When or where? What year? Oh, 90... Shit, about... About 92, I think it was. I actually did two jumps courses. Well, I did two balloon jumps. Just as we did the balloon jump on our first course, the golf wall kicked off. So all the Hercules went out to the gulf. And it's funny actually, apologies people who've heard this story before, but I shared a room with two SAS guys and they were asking me if I knew a guy called Bob Consiglio who was one of the first Marines ever to actually leave the Marines and then join the SAS, which you actually had to do it that way round back then. You couldn't just transfer like you can now. And literally the next day or two, we got it, so we got fell in and told the course had been cancelled. So I drove back to Plymouth with a couple of two nine guys. And I'm sighting my old man's house. I put the telly on and this coffin was coming out of a church somewhere in the UK. And it said, today the people of So-and-so village buried the body of trooper Bob Consiglio. I was like, what? Just literally was talking about this guy the day before. So yeah, I found I was quite shocking that was. He's one of the Bravo 20 blocks, wasn't he? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it's funny you took about health and safety Steve because back in my day, like the Marines were, you know, the stuff that they did, they were really good at, right? And one of the things that we were famous for was death slides. You know, they used to death slide from like London Bridge or Tower Bridge or something. Used to dress in like a pinstripe suit with an umbrella and a bowler hat. And they cleverly rigged the umbrella so that I think a cable went up inside it and it looked like they're coming down, someone's coming down from the, you know, from the city or something. But I was chatting the other day with one of the recruits or it just passed out. And he said, ah, they don't use the death slide at Limster at the moment. Someone fell off it. Health and safety. So on my reply was someone's supposed to fucking fall off it. That's why it's dangerous. I'm pretty sure they can't call them death slides anymore as well. They're called zip lines or whatever now, aren't they? Oh, okay. Yeah. I remember getting, I did my preachy eye course years ago and they were saying about, it can't call it a death slide because that sort of suggests someone's going to die. And the other one was you can't call an assault course an assault course because it's too aggressive and it's called now called an obstacle course. I don't know whether that still stands but it was just, that's when it was all going mental. Yeah. And people wonder why we're in the shit that we're in now. Yeah. Well, some of us wonder, most people seem blissfully unaware that we've just basically lost almost all our freedom now. Yeah. Maybe the story for it for another podcast but in saying, I do think a service personnel we've all been fucking lied to. And that the dead bodies of our oppos that what was all that about, you know? Well, so just half what they died for freedom and now we're all under house arrest and force procedures and all this sort of shit. It's just madness. Yeah. There's a lot of crazy stuff going on now. Yeah. Yeah. Cornwall seem to be hit quite hard by all this kind of overthinking and stress and worry. I'm guessing it's because they, because they lost a lot of the tourist industry. Yeah. To be fair, personally, I haven't really seen that much. Obviously, you've got people in the shops with the masks and, but, you know, I suppose I keep to myself quite a bit. Yeah. We've got furloughed and I just left the military when it all started the coronavirus. I've only just left the army. So, you know, I was in a job but I was on furlough within a few months. Yeah. I wasn't really, you know, I didn't see that much of it. I suppose just straight into lockdown and I hadn't really got into much of a routine in Civic Street to be fair. So, yeah. What year did you join up, Steve? I joined in 93, mate. 93? That's five years after me. You're making me feel old. Yeah. So, you must have done your first jumps in 91 then with a golf... Yeah. I did mine in 93 in the 93. Yeah, I loved it. Without doubt, the best course I ever did in the military was the jumps course. It's like a holiday, innit? Yeah. Just do that all day long, couldn't you? For Poweredge recruits, it was just mental because he's just, you know, I remember like they're doing the warm-ups and they're like, right, that's it. No, they're going down, five press-ups and we're like, these just say five press-ups, innit? You know, just weren't there to beat you. They're actually trying to get you warmed up rather than just destroy you. And then we got like mega scarf with, you know, Cookhouse air is brilliant, innit? We're like, she's got tons of heat. We're like, this is met. It's like a bloody holiday, innit? But yeah, I think ours was... We were only there for maybe three weeks. I think our course was quite quick. But I know they can go on for about a month. Yeah, we... I was got a bit funny at one point because we've fell inside that little block that you used to have to sleep in, little accommodation block. And I don't know if it's the CSM or whoever it was or just the colour sergeant, but you come out and you're like, right, who's left fucking underpants on the radiator? And he had this real B in his bonnet about it. And he said, right, that's it. Leave his council for the weekend. And it was one of the Marines or one of the two nine guys and he went, you what? We're fucking train ranks. We're not fucking recruits. We'll go on when we fucking won. Thank you very much. And yeah, it was like a bit of... We've all got a bit weird there for a second. Right. Yeah. We were just joes, mate. We just did what we were told. We had no say in anything. Yeah, of course. But you've done loads of jumps, Steve, haven't you? Yeah, really. I mean, compared to civvies, I haven't done any. But in military circles, yeah, I don't know. All right, I did about... I was all up. I did probably 450, 500 jumps. Yeah. But in civvy street, that's nothing. That's when you do that in your first year or something, through a skydive. Yeah, you get skydive instructors, don't you? They've done like 14,000 jumps and stuff. Yeah, easy. Yeah, and more. But yeah, I was quite lucky, really. I did my tandem master's course and obviously did my palo and ho course. And as well as my static line. But yeah, I did a right for a military person. And we used to have to keep up quite a few different currencies in the bar finders as well. So normal parachuting, you've got to do one jump or so every two years to keep current. But we had to do one jump with every type of different parachute every six months at least. So we were quite lucky. We'd get the jumps in a bit more than the average bloke, I suppose. And how many times did you pull your reserve? Two. Yeah, two, mate. That's like beyond the odds. I'd say one of them now, I reckon one of them, the first one, now I would have waited a lot longer. I was still on my course. So I did my count, looked up, it wasn't good. Look back down, look back up. I was like, I still not good. So I was like, right, cut away. That was on my three, four course. And then, but that one, yeah, I kind of learned over time that you can ride them out quite a lot, quite a long time, slow opener. And the second one was definitely a malfunction, horseshoe malfunction. It's like really dangerous. But that one I would do the same again. But yeah, I'd say I probably had one, definitely had one bonafide malfunction. And another one, which I don't know. I don't know. I never know. Maybe it would have opened. I left it a few more seconds, but you know what it's like. You're getting to the limit in quite quick towards the ground. Yeah, it's that situation that you don't ever really want to be in, do you? No, no. Well, on that we used to jump with a parachute called a GQ360, and it had a thing on it called a hype finder. Something called Cyprus has taken over now. It's automatically opens your parachute. But this thing used to pull your main, not your reserve. It's pulled your main at a preset height. And it was on a, the parachute was on a kicker spring, but sometimes you could feel the kicker spring, you're being free for, you can feel it hitting you on the back of the head where it's just flopping around them as you come out of the parachute and having caught in the air and drill was still like roll your shoulders and there's all these drills to do. I was just, I'd sort of exhausted the drills and I was looking at my out of it, I was like, Jesus Christ, man, I'm still going down pretty rapid. But when my reserve came out, so my main was flapping around like this, my main kicker spring, then my reserve came out on a kicker spring and they wrapped around each other. So I just had two kicker springs, basically wrapped around each other and I was just rolling my shoulders and all this sort of shit that he's supposed to throw an elbow in the back of the parachute. And then, yeah, eventually it came out, obviously, all in beer. But yeah, as I looked up, my main was dragging, wrong, my reserve was dragging my main behind me. Look, it's, you know, when I landed, yeah, I was just like, I actually landed and forgot to drop my container as well, because you know, that's like, when you jump in any parachute, your main could certainly drop in you, get in your bargain off your leg, so you don't smash your leg. But I was kind of preoccupied with not dying, I think, at the time. And I landed and I sat, we had our burgers on the back of our legs at the time. And as I landed, as soon as I landed, I sat on top of my burger and then just fell off backwards and landed on the desert. I remember just going, dick, running out to myself because I hadn't dropped my container. Yeah, it's easy, isn't it, to get so caught up in it all, in the heat of the moment and forget something. I remember I was, I had the wind behind me, so I was going quite fast with the wind. Yeah. And just, I got my wires crossed in my head and rather than pull down on the front lift webs, sorry, sorry, the back, was it, yeah, the back, isn't it? If you, I pulled on the front, so I'm going even faster and the PJ on the ground, PJ on the ground, shouting, number 27, let up, let up. Well, to me, he's talking to someone else, isn't he? And fucking out, did I creme in, you know, when you really hit hard and you knock yourself a bit unconscious, it was like that. And, yeah. Yeah, then ran through to a bastard. So, I mean, they come, you ain't got no time to muck about, that's the thing when you do your, like, your normal jumping. So, you know, you jump to 800 feet or whatever, you're coming down pretty rapid, there's no, no time to muck about, is there, you get something wrong, that's it, you fucked it really. Yeah. At least with freefall, you got, you know, once you get a bit more experienced, you got a bit more time, you know, in military parachuting, you're generally deploying your parachute of 5,000 feet right now. When I did my course, it was two and a half, 3,000 feet sometime. But now it's normally say 5,000 feet, so you've got a fair few seconds to sort anything out, there's no massive panic. But, you know, normal parachuting, it's just, it's not going to be long, you're smashing into the deck, but it's got to make a fast decision. Yeah. Yeah, I've been entangled with someone as well, and I went through some blokes reading lines, and I've just, it's like, I'm not, I'm not bloke, he's, he's, he's like, he's been to 11 a reef, I feel sometimes someone's like, oh, yeah, I've got into, I got entangled, and if I, you know, I had a malfunction, but I'm not bullshit. And it's like, which is, you, someone would just say, yeah, bad skills, mate, that's just, yeah, I landed entangled with some bloke. I didn't know him. I didn't, he was an officer as well. And I don't, he just seen him right the day before. And I think, who the fuck's that bloke, you know, the one pit, you know, one pit wonders, we used to call him, you know, second lieutenant. And then I mean, I only clocked him, but then it turned us, he was a TA, the TA officer, just like, oh no, one with us free, free power for the exercise. And when I, one of my canopy opened, I looked forward, and I just, I was like straight away going through his rigging lines, oh shit. And I was just like, you're supposed to spread out on you and all this, but it's too late. I've gone through and then dropped down. I was like, oh shit. And I looked down at him and he looked up at me and I clocked him, it was there, he said, don't worry if you can't lower your container, because he's thinking if I might drop my burger on his head, you know, he said, don't worry, you can land with it on, you'll be all right. I was like, fuck, you know, no chance, mate, I'm not landing with him. I was like, I'll take my chances, he was a bit jacked really, but I was only a young lad, so I just like popped it off and just missed him. And I went past his head pretty much. But yeah, we both landed, it was, it was, you know, we both were right, to be fair, but that could have gone wrong, it did go wrong, could have gone more wrong. Yeah, it's funny that you'll both be telling that story for the rest of your lives, he's out there somewhere now telling it to some, you never guess what I'm to me. Yeah, yeah, I wonder if he beefs up a little bit though, you know, so one of our parachutes collapsed or something. Maybe he makes it sound a bit more excited, I don't know. Don't know who he was, he came over and shook my hand, he said, oh, can I, what's your name? I said, Private Browns, all right. And he said his name, and I just want to know who to tell people I was in a tango with. And I just had to get somewhere quick and get told off, you know. Yeah. And Steve, how long did you, how long did you serve in the end? I did my 22, mate, regular time, and then I got five years full-time reserve service at the end. So I did 27 in the end, I got 27. I was quite lucky, really. Yeah, I mean, you will come on to this, but you certainly got around in all that time. Yeah, mate, lucky, you know, I got a lot of travelling and a lot of exercises and went to loads of different places. Yeah, I was quite lucky, really, with my time, I suppose. I suppose it was because, you know, some soldiers have gone through their career and not got to do a lot. Or, you know, they've just been unlucky or not sort of scratched that itch, I suppose. And I feel like that when I met some folks not too long ago, actually, they were a bit like that, a couple of officers and felt like they got out at the wrong time or whatever because they missed some tours. But we thought it was going to be the same, no matter when you go or join, you're always going to miss something. Yeah, we missed the Gulf War. I was on ship at the time. We were going to be the first ship to set sail in HMS Invincible. Yeah, and as we were all expecting to pull away from the side in Pompey, the captain came on a tannoy and went. They're sending the Atlantic conveyor instead. It was the new Atlantic conveyor for anyone who's wondering how there's an Atlantic conveyor, because some of you know, it got sunk in the Falklands. But and that was it. And all around the ship, you could hear all the Matlow's cheering because they didn't want to go to war in our mess deck. Everyone was just in silence, staring at the floor. And but. I feel I put in for four to commander because I knew that they were going to Northern Ireland. And I thought, if I if I am going to serve, I want to see some action. So, yeah, we that was my first first tour was I went to Northern Ireland before I went to Norway, which is a bit unusual. Yeah, because you were massively into the Arctic Warfare, I guess, at that point with the Marines. I know they're still like leading it now, but there's a lot of quite a big thing at the time when I spoke to the end of the Cold War, sort of. Yeah, I don't know how it sits now, because back then the bullshit was the Russians are coming over the northern flank of Europe and we've got to fight them off. And I mean, it wouldn't be the first time. I think they've done that to Sweden and Finland before. But yeah, I don't know what the. What the mission is now to be up there in Norway training, but I'm guessing the Marines still still do it because that was one of their big things. But you've been up there a few times, haven't you? Yeah, yeah, we was in free power and we went to the. It's called AMFL. I don't even know what it stands for. Mobile Force, maybe light. Well, yeah, we did that for a few years when we were in Dover. And that was so most of our training was led by MLs, Royal Marine Marine Leaders, especially at the start. And we had we had a couple of Royal Marine officers attached to us. In fact, one of them was that captain, maybe major, Phil Ashby. Sure, he was Marines. He got captured in Sierra Leone. He's done I'm pretty sure he's written a book. Yeah, we had a couple of Royal Marine blokes. And yeah, I did my MSI course. And yeah, I've worked with a few Marines over the time. Yeah, good, good bunch of blokes, mate. No, good, correct. Yeah, but it was, yeah, Norway was interesting. And I did a course with the Swedish SF while I was in the Parfons as well. That was a good, correct. They bleed mental, they were. And any good because they've got feet, they've got females as well, haven't they? They I don't think they did in the unit. We were working with the FJS and I can't remember what I stand for, but they were really, really good, mate. There was a few instructors and they were like the parachute jump instructors. They were the ski instructors. This bloke was driving the book, the coach. He was a scuba diver when we did ice breaking. He was like in scuba kit. I had to go and get my ski poles. So I dropped him, SOPs. Yeah, they seemed to be able to do everything, mate. And they had this bloke called Major Connie Grayus. He was an absolute maniac. And he had to hang it in the flight swing before parachuting. And he was like whacking us around the legs with a stick. You know, get your toes up, get your knees together. And he's like, we're not hanging there in his harness. Not with him, people. It was just like old school lunatic. And then he did ice breaking drills and he just he got the company. Come out of the water, got naked. They do it slightly different. They're resident in the UK and they get out of the ice and get out of the water. Roll around in the snow to get the water off your clothes. They didn't do it like that. They get out at the time he got out, got naked. He fucking ran off into the woods naked across the lake where he was funny. I think he's still going now. I think he's still doing like Sivvy courses out in Sweden. He was a good bloke, crazy. He was. Yeah, I could never get out of that harness. You know, when you when you come into water and you've got one, do it and just sit in and get ready to throw yourself out or throw it off. Yeah, always catches on like my lats. I've got my body used to be shaped like a bloody Dorito or something. And I was the only one, Steve, in the whole of the hangar. You know, only blokes are hanging there, excuse the pun, but there's probably like 100 blokes hanging around in the hangar. And I was right, you're coming into water. I'm just off now and I'd go. And I just stay there. Too many chin ups, Chris. Yes. Well, yeah, I had. I had a big climate. My dad built me a climbing frame when I was about five and it was up the side of our house. He built out a scaffolding pose. So it was just so I've been playing on that from five. He's had a rope swing and everything. So I put that down to I put my up a body strength down down to that. I probably deformed from a young age. Well, we did a water jump in three a couple of years ago into into Falmouth, Harbour. Oh, really? Yeah. That's the only time that I've ever done a water jump. But that was a good crack. He didn't need to wear a helmet and you could do it in trainers. And I think everyone just had like lightweight, but no one wanted to look at there on the fifth, you know, on the sixth. And I don't have anyone more trainer. But yeah, that was that was a good crack. Well, I thought it was going to be quite a spectacle. I, you know, loads of birds, loads of chicks watching and stuff on the beach. But it was about five miles out or something. You know, it just miles out of the sea. You know, jumped in, got picked up and shipped back. Not the sort of bit of an anti-climate, really. But it's a good crack. Do you wear a life jacket to do that? I can't remember. I guess you must do. Yeah, I can't actually. Yeah, you do. That's yeah, definitely do. So I remember someone of the likes pulled it and he got beasted by the rest of the bloke. That's like if I'd be in a fanny, you know, but well, the thing is, it's just one more bit of kit on top of all the all the kit. You're already I know they do they tend to do those jumps in light order, don't they? Yeah, like, yeah, we didn't have any kit. But yeah, I remember I had to reserve floats a bit and but I was the worry that as always, I don't even know if it's true. There's stories that the parachute can drag you down under war and you know, you've got to get out, you've got to get out of there quick. But I think this lad, Jay, he popped his PLP, his life preserver. The beach just got beasted. Can't do anything right, can you? I've just got the page in me when you're in Miami, Miami, South Beach. Oh, yeah, that's quite a place, isn't it? Yeah, I did about I think it's about five days down there. Is that the story where I was going where I was training? Yeah, you've got an electric bike, wasn't it? Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's funny one. Yeah, that was funny. And yeah, my Mr. Jack, I was in Belize, yeah. And basically, I asked the QM, I said, when we finished the exercise, I said, is there any chance I can get the get just graph like mad for a couple of days, rather than go and do a bit of graph. We're going to do a bit of graph, go on R&R, come back and finish off the graph. I said, can I just can I just crack on and do all the graph until you until you're happy and then just and then just go spend as much time in Miami. I want to go training there. And he's like, he's a mega bloke. I knew him from free power. He said, mate, just just get yourself cut away now straight away. And I went to Miami looking for an NMM agent, basically, there's loads there. Yeah, it was good, mate. Good, correct. Good back five days, I think I've got there. It's mad there, though, isn't it? Because the language is Spanish. Yeah, there was a good mix in it, because I thought Cuban population. But yeah, to be honest, I didn't really mix with that many people. I just got this bike, cycled around for ages, put myself in some right dodgy places, found a good gym and then American top team it was. And then I ended up training there for a week and then a bloke. Let me train there for free as well, because I was military. You know, they're not what they like in America, they're brilliant with the military. So that's all right, mate, you can train there for free. You know, that electric bike, which, you know, is embarrassing to say. It was good to be a kid. I used to ride to this gym. It's like 25 days or 23 days away, plug the bike in, train for free. Come back and then maybe do that a couple of times a day. You know, it's good. That's exactly the sort of thing that back in my day, the Marines would do. If you were, if you'd gone on exercise somewhere or adventure training or something and you found out you could hire electric, everyone would just would have just hired one. Yeah, mate, it's massive. It was a big, it was an MMA fighter himself. This bloke had a bike hire shop down on South Beach and I went in there and I said, mate, you know, I'm after getting a bike for the week because we got chatting and he said, what are you doing? I said, I'm looking for, I want to train some MMA gyms. I just need to go round and I'm going to drive right around and find the best one. And he said, you want one of these then? And he pointed at his electric bike and we got off a bit of a banter straight away. I said, fuck off, mate, I don't need that. And he said, no, no, you need it round here, mate. He said, you know, you're going to be doing some miles. You know, you need some electric. And I put it into my legs. He's massive, mate. I think he was a smash man. Big, big old boy he was. He said, I said, this is my fucking. These are my batteries here, mate. Point to my hex or some shit like that. I was going on to go with airborne this and that. I think he was just marine or something. And then he said, all right, he said, but, you know, if you change your mind, come back. The next day I went back, mate. I was fucked. I've driven, I've ridden miles and miles all around these different gyms. Got lost, ended up in some right dodgy places where I thought it was going to get murdered. And then, yeah, I went back there the next day and said, oh, yeah, about that electric bike got one here. Brilliant. Yeah, it is pretty rough there. I, I, I spent one night drinking on the beach with some homeless Vietnam veterans and just like listen to their story. And, and then a moment going in a shop and there was homeless people outside arguing and they're all like cut up from where they've been fighting and stuff. And it was just, yeah, just to side of life, really. You don't, you don't get to see in Devon. And, and the thing that I just found surprised is that everywhere you went, everyone's speaking Spanish. I get it, I understand why, but it's just hang on, you're in America. But, but everything's Spanish here. It was, it was quite, quite, quite weird. Yeah, it's like that down in. We used to go to El Centro. It was California, Arizona, down that way. And there's loads and loads of Spanish speaking down there as well. Same, just walking around the shop in centers and most people are more loads and loads of people speaking Spanish or the signs are in Spanish as well, aren't they? Yeah, just, you know, I've been to America quite a few times with it with the army, especially with a parachuting, because you do the a lot of the freefall training in America, just because of the weather, you know, you got guaranteed weather. So we used to go there quite a lot with a path on us. But if you try and freefall jump, get a lot of jumps in the UK, you just get rained off or there's too cloudy or too windy all the time. Yeah, I, I did my. Is it AFF? It's called my freefall course. I did that in Florida. And then, in fact, no, no, no. I took my pilot's license for three and a half weeks in Florida, then they gave me a plane and I flew up the coast of a place called Sebastian. Oh, yeah. Yeah, did skydiving and and you get the weather because you get the heads of cloud build at the end of the day. But all throughout the day, it's just pristine. And I remember thinking, my God, if I try to do this in the UK, I'll be waiting years. But, you know, over there, you can get. 20 jumps in a day, if you, you know, if you can pack your shoot fast enough and get back on the plane. That's it. That's it, mate. Get a sort of just packing quick. But I think my freefall course was, I think it was 53 jumps. And like you say, trying to do that in the UK, it's just could take forever. It could take months. It takes forever. The rules would be, you know, the rules would be stricter in them and it would cost a lot more, wouldn't it? Yeah, yeah, yeah, I did. Yeah. But yeah, it's just. Jumping in the military is really difficult. I think at the moment, it's all because it's just no aircraft. You send. You know, it's and I used to the depot. Every depot used to finish and go on a jumps course. I'm not sure if it's still the same now. But they a while ago, they were waiting, you know, holding recruits back and actually sending blokes to battalion without their wings. And then waiting for a couple of platoons to a past out. So you'd have enough blokes to fill a jumps course. But it's all down to the budget cuts and all the rest of it. But when I went through depots, just the jumps courses were planned to come inside with the recruits reaching that point in their training, you know, with nice and smooth. Yeah, it's a bit everyone would look forward to, isn't it? Yeah, yeah, become a real power. And now they don't even have the balloon anymore. No, that's that got that went ages ago. I was quite lucky, actually. So I've got the balloon on my course. And then I got to do some more balloon jumps in Belgium a few years later or a couple of years later because they had it. I think they had our old balloon. But then that was that was a good crack through my Belgium wings. It's just a couple of jumps. Steve, tell us about the power finders then because I've been asked many times to get a power finder on my show. And I think you're the first to be honest, or. Well, maybe I've had one before and I didn't realise. Can you tell us how they were a very proud elite few, aren't they? And how did how did power finders come about? Is it a Second World War thing? Well, yeah, there was power finders in the Second World War, but it kind of merged and changed loads and loads of time. Then it sort of got reinvented in 1985, as pretty much as how it is now under a black economy. So they weren't actually an established unit, which is bloke's kind of then selected. You know, look, it's like your BPT. So the raw means you used to have, I think I've changed now, but used to have the brigade patrol troop. The closest, that's the best similarity you're going to find, I think, is that was your brigade reconnaissance. Yeah. And in the airborne brigade, the power finders, is their brigade reconnaissance. I think the BPT is now called the BRF Brigade Reconnaissance Force. Power finders is still going in the 16th aerosol brigade. Yeah, it's about it's a platoon platoon plus strength. And you applied to go on it. So you volunteered to go on a selection carder, of course. That's six weeks. I'm not sure if it might have gone up to seven now, say six weeks long, mostly done in Senebridge, Wales. Yeah, to get beasted and learn loads of good stuff, like working in small teams, a lot of fitness, navigation, a lot of contact drills, learn live ranges and some hard exercises. But it's good, mate. Yeah, I had a really good time there. I went there in 1999. And yeah, I had a really good time there. Busy, really busy. But I bet it's kind of really aspired to, isn't it? I bet everyone wants. There's a lot of people who want to do it, mate. And then, you know, there's a lot of people who want to go SF and they'll just say, why bother going and putting myself through the, you know, through the PF selection. I might as well just go on selection, which I kind of see a little bit, but they're two very different things. And, you know, it's like you've got your recce troops who patrols the recce platoon or troop in the Marines. You've got your patrols platoon in Power Edge, which is like your Italian advance force, almost. And then you can step up a little bit, you know, if you see it that way and then go to Pathfinders. And then a lot of boats go from Pathfinders to Special Forces as well. Some people just skip, just go straight to Special Forces, you know? But I enjoyed it, mate. And, you know, I don't regret it at all. It was hard. The car, the carter, the Pathfinder carter was hard. But it was it was good, rewarding. And then, you know, it got me a lot of good stuff. I've got a lot of good stuff out of it, to be fair, mate. How long did you spend with them? Well, I grew up, I did about 10 years. So I, well, I was on the PF car, carter in 99. I was a private, I got promoted during that carter. So I went to, I went to PF as a last corporal. And then I left there as a colour sergeant. And so, yeah, the only rank I didn't serve in the PF, actually, was as colour sergeant. When I got my colour sergeant, I got posted. Then I came back a few years later as a sergeant major. And that was hard. That was hard work. Blimey, that was a busy job that was. Yeah. Yeah, you left as a sergeant major, didn't you? Yeah, mate. Yeah. Yeah, I was happy with that, to be fair, you know, and it's to be honest, I didn't I didn't pursue going any, any further. I'm not like I could have done, but, you know, I didn't I didn't I didn't actually pursue it because, you know, as you go through the ranks, the jobs get less and less in why you're booking in desirable. You're looking around thinking, well, you know, what do I want to do next? This sort of there's not that many W02 or some major jobs. I like to look off, to be honest. But apart from the serge major is a job I really wanted to do. I was really lucky to be happy to get that. That was sort of that. It wasn't really I had a couple. I did a few jobs as a sergeant major, you know, they're just not particularly enjoyable, most of them. Part of it was enjoyable in as much as it was rewarding, but it was hard work, not really hard work, non-stop. Did you ever jump jump into. Conflict or no, I mean, no, I think it's been done by well, no, it's been done by the SF, you know, SAS blokes. You know, a couple of mates who've gone who have done that outside of that. I don't think it's been done by anyone, mate, since Suez. Really, you know, you get your nose saying it's what's the point and all this sort of stuff that hasn't been done for so long. But it's that capability, you know, the French did it into. Well, you know, not Marley. Where's it for the French jumping somewhere in Africa? Couple of years ago, they did quite a big large scale. But it's a really good capability, you know, it's really good. I think getting rid of it would be crazy. But no, mate, in short, no, I've never jumped into into Ops. Did you know Steve Matthews at all? Steve Matthews. Sorry, it's just one of those. I'm just throwing it. Throwing it out there. Thank you, sir. I think he was one power, actually. Steve was on the show and he was saying that they almost got to jump into into battle and was it a rack, I think? And it was everyone was like, yeah, yeah, we're going to go, we're going to go. And then, you know, as we all know, it's like, no, sorry, it's all off. Yeah, I don't think where it was, because I was it was over a rack. I think it was a rack, mate, because the PGI's and everyone, they got flown out of there in a parachute jump, the dispatchers, basically. And yeah, I was in P.F. at the time. I think it was a rack and it was rumours going around. Everyone was buzzing, mate. You know, really, really excited. And then because we work closely with the PGI's in the path on as we kind of, you know, we become quite good friends with quite a few of them and sort of see them see them out on tour and like, well, hang on a minute. You know, it's like they're in and they say, what are you doing out here? And they're like, oh, we've come out of all the parachutes. You know, everyone's getting well excited. Yeah, I can't remember the reasons why it got called off. There was going to be in fact, there was going to be. A jump into the considering a jump. That was a rack, actually, a par finder patrol went and wrecked this, I think it was a disused airfield. There's not even be a book written about it. But yeah, they blatantly wrote a book. I haven't read it myself, but there's a book written about that operation because they basically got massively compromised on the way to wreck your drop zone for the battalion to jump in. But yeah, I mean, I think it nearly happened a few times, mate, nearly. What what weapon do you use as a par finder? So you've got C8 nowadays, which is like, you know, like your old AR type variant. I think the PPT got them as well. There's a few of them, a few people got them. Like an M16 type weapon, right? Yeah, yeah. Really, yeah, really nice bit of kit. It's got long barrel, short barrel, just a bit more lightweight. You know, it's easy to maintain. It is a good weapon. That took a long time, you know, and then obviously when the par finders did get it, eventually it took a long, long time and a few good officers were in pushing for it. And then everyone kind of a lot of other units were like, oh, we need that as well. And shit, they nearly they nearly stopped us getting it because all of a sudden everybody was trying to find out what our our our demand had got through trying to copy and paste it. And then lots of other units will say, yeah, we need that for the same reasons. They almost just turned it off and said, well, none of you fuck with it again. So, you know, but in the end, you know, the PF got it. I think some MPs, RMP military police might have it, I'm not sure. But it's a good, yeah, it's a good weapon, mate. And then obviously we've got the the LMGs and a 50. I mean, the PF army is really good, right? You know, you look at it, it's got at least like six or seven 50 cows, 20 or GPMGs and we had our own Milans. You know, and you tank missiles. We had everything really, you know, every man has got a pistol. And yeah, the army was actually quite was really, really good competitors, you know, just sort of normal rifle company armory. Yeah, we're really lucky, really well equipped. And these contacts that I've read about towards the end of the book. Were you with Pathfinder's then? Yeah, mate. Can you tell us a bit about that because people at home won't have any idea what it's like to be a Pathfinder, let alone to come under an enemy fire and and be mortared and and and rocket propelled, grenade grenades and the like. Yeah, well, yeah, I mean, I've not been in hundreds. Some blokes have been in loads and loads of dust-ups, but yeah, I've been in a few a few dust-ups and that, but yeah, it's like you say, the RPG, that RPG go over the bonnet once. That's the story you've written. So many stories, man, a little story I forget what I've written sometime, but what you might be referring to. But yeah, there was one time we were out in in Afghanistan when we were heading towards a town called Garmseer. And basically, we're getting to an obvious sort of choke point. This is dodgy as fuck. But so we got, you know, we've got to go through it. So, you know, you can't just turn off a mission because you think it's dangerous. Obviously, the mission is dangerous by nature. So, yeah, we love changing into change from night vision and to take a night vision kit off. And then what we're doing that, the guy picked up a transmission on a radio and radio into me and said, I've just heard a message, picked up a message and intercepted a message. And then someone said, they are coming. We are ready. And I was like, OK. But over to our flank, there was 300 led by a British team and 300 A&A Afghan National Army and A&P and Afghan National Police, big force event, not only a few hundred meters away from us, we picked them up on the scopes and then what it could be, they're probably talking about them. They might be talking about us, but there's a lot. You know, they're a much bigger signature. They could be talking about them. I said, all right, OK, but we're always stood to do anyway. You're always expecting something anyway. So we're patrolled off. And I normally used to go lead vehicle, but you prefer, you know, I just prefer to pick my own route. And I, you know, rather than keep telling someone else to go left or right. And then, yeah, so we're patrolling off. And then all this fucking RPG goes coming, comes our way and then obviously take a load of their small arms fly, but it's RPG landed not too, not too far away, but far away enough, you know, not a massive killing area in an RPG. And, you know, we were obviously returning fire and my mate Dan was driving. And so I remember like reversing quite up this pile of rubble or something, like, you know, we don't want to roll the wagon. And I said, I said to make Danny, I said, calm down, mate, take your time, mate. You know, don't roll the wagon. We're just chatting a lot. Normally we're chatting now. He's like, oh, I'm not working. I'm not back on the gun. She's giving up on that. Anyway, we did our contact drill and we've got to be practicing it all the time on vehicles. Luckily, we took no casualties, which loads, we had about 10 vehicles. So it's a lot of firepower, you know, and returning fire, extracted out of the area. And then we're like in a rally point and it's one of the blokes says to me, fuck, you know, that RPG was close when I said, no, we weren't that close, mate. I said it was 20 meters away, you know, we're not close. He said, fuck off as much as fucking well close. I said, it were, mate. I said, it's 20 meters away. And then my mate, Dan says, it's not that one, Steve. He's like, you mean the second one. I didn't see it at all, mate. I said, I can't remember it now. He said, no, no, he means the second one. I was like, well, you are. There was two. And he said, yeah, mate. And I said, yeah, the second one went right over the fucking bonnet, you know, just missed. And I was with you know, the blokes like we're just laughing. I said, fuck me, mate. I didn't even realize I was just laughing. He said, yeah, you were too busy shooting, mate. Because I'm like, he's on the blindside really, because I'm like this on a GPMG. But he said, yeah, mate, that one was really close. It just whistled over the bonnet. I was like, oh, shit. But I made it mine. There was another contact. That was in Iraq, where one went between the front and the back wheels. They were driving along the road. And someone fired an RPG. My mate, I think it was my mate Cam's vehicle. But the vehicle behind saw it. And it went, you know, because they're driving through an ambush, basically. And it fired through and it missed them. But it went underneath from between the front and rear axle. It's just like, mate, sometimes you just get lucky. Sometimes you don't. Do you have to account for these rounds that you're firing when you're actually in combat? Or can you just now give? No, basically, you need to get an ammo resupply. So you kind of work out where everyone's fired. And then just when you fire up your contact report, you've, well, I'd do anyway, just say how much ammunition I've expended and try and get some more sent out as soon as you can. But we used to carry a lot of ammo, you know. So it's not like we would run out particularly quickly. We had a lot. But now, mate, you just, I mean, at the end of the tour, or if you haven't fired any ammo, then obviously, you're going to expect everything back. So you can't just kind of rattle it off and then expect to get away with it. You know, they know exactly how much you've been issued. You need to give that much back. So, but yeah, once you've been in there, once you've been shooting, it's kind of gets a bit rough, you know, it's like I shot about 600 rounds of 762. Can you give me 600 rounds back? You know, it could be 700 or 500. The term. No, mate, it's not really that account. Not that well, that is well accounted for. But no one's going to, no one's going to really dispute it. If you say, if you're in a contact, there's holes in the vehicles and people have been shot where they're not really cares. It's all about preserving life, really. Yeah, we had a situation in Belfast where we're on a vehicle patrol. And my mate was on top covering the vehicle behind. And every time we'd gone around this corner, this lad had come out with a brick or something. And my mate said, right, next time he does that, I'm going to bat him round in, right? Which is not really, not for anyone, this is not really good behavior. It happens. Allegedly. You know, yeah, allegedly. You're supposed to sort of reserve them for if life is really under threat, I suppose, in a riot or something where you could get overrun. But so this lad come running shot shot in full force in the chest. And then, of course, we had to account, didn't we, for one missing bat and round. And the RUC gave us one. Probably shouldn't be saying this. And probably going to, yeah, allegedly, the RUC gave us one. Probably going to start kick off the war again. But yes. Yeah, I think that's one of the forgotten places. Northern Ireland was when I got to battalion. Well, when I went to Northern Ireland, I was together, it was, say, 97, 96, 97, but they were trying to start the peace process or it was kind of just kicking off then, the peace process. So it was quite a tame tour compared to what a lot of the blokes have been on before. And then I had all these, you know, I had all these really mega stories about what the blokes had got up to and all these scraps they'd got in. And, you know, it was a crazy place in Northern Ireland. I think it's probably almost already forgotten about. And certainly the next generation will just be totally forgotten about, but it was a nasty, nasty place, wasn't it, as a soldier? Oh, some of the stuff that went on was just hideous, you know, just the torture and the kneecappings and just shooting innocent people on their way home from the pub. I'm not judging anyone. I'm just saying that's how it, you know, that's how it was. But it was quite kinetic, I think, is the word that's used these days. For the first, we were attached to one, sorry, I'll start again. I started off in M company for Two Commander, right? They patrolled out of a base called White Rock. But the little troop I was with, it was sort of a half troop, was called the Commando Reserve. And so we would be tasked to go and do jobs in other areas of the commander unit. So one day we got tasked to Lima Company's Lima Company's area, which was the Ardoin. So talking, I think that's more North Belfast. West Belfast, I think, yeah, when they are doing West Belfast. Is that West, is it? Yeah, someone's telling me the other day it's North, but anyway, so here's the thing, nothing of consequence had happened to this moment. And it left you thinking, all the buildup you've done, which was six months, you know, Liddon High, far enough rounds, you know, on the ranges, mock up villages, two, two conversion kits in your weapons, you're actually, you know, controlling with live ammunition, all this sort of stuff. It left you thinking all that was just overkill and just a bit of like, I don't know, you'd call it army, barmy, sort of shit, you know, but nothing's really, well, you get really lowed and I'm sure you've experienced this in the Middle East. You get really lowed into a false sense of security thinking nothing's gonna happen. And then when we got tasked to Lima Company, Goodwood Park, it was back then, as we patrolled out the front gate, the IRA blew up the back gate or blew up one of our Sangers that was on the, I think it was a new lodge road behind the camp and you don't all feel those bombs go off every, you know, you feel it, well, as you noticed it, you know, you feel it under your feet. And so we'd literally running out bombers and you don't know that it's not you that's been hit because you know, is it someone in your patrol, whatever. So we all made ready to cover behind the actual boulders in front of the camp, you know, the ones to stop the suicide bombers. And it's that thing where no one knows what's happening and so our brick man has listened to the radio and he's like, right, we're going back in. So we let it back in. So that was interesting. And then I hooked up with my mate who'd been in an observation post on one of the flat, blocks of flats and the SAS has been in there at the time and the IRA come round a corner with a machine gun. So similar to our GPMG and they set up in the street and they fired up to this observation post. And my mate said, he said, all the Marines like hit the deck and he's scrambling, scrambling for the radio. He said, the SES are like, fuck that, kicked all the windows open and they were just firing down into the street. So that was in the afternoon. And then early, I think it was like early evening, we went out to start patrolling towards the Ardoin and I won't bore people with a story, but we got to this little section of park and we had a conco with us at some continuity officer from the regiment before, because we'd only been there two weeks. And he said, right, fellas, we won't patrol across the open. No, we won't patrol down the alleyway. It's notorious for IEDs. We'll go across the open ground, break into diamond formation, so which we did. And as our tail end Charlie, Jock, as I call him in my book, stepped onto the grass behind me, suddenly this sniper or technically a gunman, but he was sniping at us from the back of the Ardoin and just a bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang. You know, that high-velocity noise and that was it. It's like, take cover, take fucking cover. We all legged it for this lone building in the middle of this park, crashed behind it. When I look back, Jock was spark out on the ground, like lifeless. So I was the first aider. So I started running, you know, running back to drag him into cover. And as I started running and all my team's going, Chris, get the fuck down, get down. And I'm thinking, I can't do that. And in that moment, Jock put his head up. His weapon was all the way over here. His, let's just call it, his electronic equipment was all the way over there. And he looked up with just the shock in his eyes, grabbed his kit and then come running over. And he's like, I'm here, I'm here, I'm here. I'm pulling open his combat jacket, his flat jacket. I'm like, you're not here, you're not here. He's like, I'm here, I'm here, I'm fucking here. I'm like, you're not fucking here. Anyway, cut long story short, he'd been hit three times. But, well, or should I say, one round went through the antenna on his equipment. One round went through his weapon sling. And the third one, it didn't even hit the fiberglass plate. It went above it, but the wadding on the jacket was thick enough that, because I think it was a 7.62 short round. So it didn't have so much impact. It hit him, that's why he spun around and that's why his equipment had flown off. And the round ended up in the top pocket of his power smock. Or his combat jacket. So, just going back to what you're saying, so yeah, this was all in one day. And then there was one particular day, there was a hundred, I think it was 171 serious incidents in one day. So a bombing, a shooting, mortar bombs, police station attack, people taking a hostage for a, you know, by a sniper, or, you know, so a sniper can do his shoot, I mean, all this kind of stuff. And the weird thing is, this isn't in the Middle East or something. This is in a, you know, technically a British city. Fucking insane. It is insane. Yeah, we were, I was in Gerwood as well, mate. You saw you were in Gerwood? Yeah, that's where we were based and on the Ardoin. Just like, I tried to explain to people, you turn a corner and it's all like red, white, and blue down one street. And then it's green, white, and orange down another. And people have just thrown bikes at you and bricks and bottles. And it's just, it's just crazy. People kind of, unless you've been there, it's quite hard to get your head around it, I think. I've got a couple of guys with a little kid, mate. I think that's one of my stories. And I think it's another book you've got where I was just like patrolling down through it. I was just coming off the Ardoin. And I was out with three pair of mortars. And this kid just walked towards me with a bottle. And he's actually, he's a tiny little kid. And he just comes walking towards me. And he's got no top on. I can't remember if it might have even been, but I don't think he's wearing a knacky, but I think he was just like pretty much half naked. And he came towards me with his bottle. And I looked at him and there's a couple of blokes in the front garden, sort of cheering him on. I thought, here we go. And this officer fucking shouts at me, don't hit him, Brown, don't hit him. I mean, the kid's just tiny, you know? I fucked right. And then the kid, you know, predictably, just tries to throw this bottle at me. I just stood still and I looked at it and I'm looking right down his tiny. And the bottle just hit me on the leg. It was empty bottle. I think it was about a milk bottle or something. Bounced off my leg and just landed on the floor and broke. And I was looking at this kid like, what the fuck? And then these two blokes were gonna, you know, thought it was brilliant. This officer was like, don't hit him, don't hit him, fuck off. And I was just like, check it, let's just shut my head, you know, I was just like, look at these blokes. I was just fucking idiots. You know, this kid just, I don't know what he's doing. Probably in prison now. Yeah, the hatred, isn't it? That's what I think people would find it hard to get their head around just the level of hatred. Yeah. Yeah, like programming your kids and your dogs. I really like dogs, you know? And I remember some blokes, dog, he'd hear it, you know, add it on a lead, he'd obviously trained it to have a go at soldiers, man. This dog was like snarling, but I think it was on the other side of his gate. He was a walk down past his house and he was like, he said something. I said, can you let that dog go, mate? I'm gonna fucking shoot it. He's like, hey, you fucking cock. And then he gave me grief. I said, I'll fucking shoot. I'm gonna fucking shoot that dog, mate. You let it off the lead, I'm gonna fucking shoot it. I fucking love dogs, but I'm just saying, well, I'm gonna get bitten to fuck by this thing. He's really much like that. Yeah, and he did let the dog off, but in my mind, I just thought, well, I just, I'm definitely gonna shoot it. You know what I mean? I'm not gonna get moved by fucking the dog. This just seemed, just didn't, just mental. Yeah, the regiment we took over from, one of their blokes got blown up. I guess it was IED. I think it was blown up. And if I got this right, it's dead bodies lying in the street and the dog comes out and starts to try to eat his, starts trying to eat him. At which point, some of the locals all start cheering and at which point one of the soldiers just turned around and shot the dog. I'm just saying this for people at home to get an idea of just the fucking mentalness of conflict and shit. You know, young men have got to go through all this and then try and be normal afterwards. And talking of which, I mean, we both had our sort of struggle, Steve, haven't we? You know, mental health-wise and your books it's great that you talk a lot about your life growing up. And I was having this conversation with somebody yesterday. I was talking to a psychiatrist who's coming on the show. He's a forensic psychiatrist and he's worked with a lot of high profile murderers and this sort of stuff, right? And I said to him, are you aware of the concept that in the military, most of us joined up with PTSD. It's not, you know, we had it from childhood and so we had quite an interesting conversation on it. But when you talk about when you're getting ready to leave and it's all starting to come to the surface. Yeah. It's mad, isn't it? You can suppress that trauma for like, in your case, 20 odd years. And yet it's still there, unresolved. And it's ready to cause havoc in your life. Yeah, mate. I think that's the hardest thing is kind of crossing that bridge and going to get some help. I spoke to a lot of people since writing that book, you know, especially a lot of people who reached out to me and sort of, or they've read that book and then they've started talking to me, people I've known for a long time. I said, I didn't realize you felt like you were like that. You know, loads of people like, I'm like, I see, I'm exactly the same. I've got exactly, my brain works exactly the same way. I was talking to an old bloke quite recently, and he said to me, in fact, I've not long met him. And he said, within me in someone, within the first few seconds, I've already worked out where I'm going to bury him. He's like, he's a veteran like, you know, and I thought, hmm, he's not these wants to, he's not saying he wants to kill people. He's just thinking, if this, what if this happens and if that happens and that happens, you know, and he's like, and I said, yeah, mate. I said, yeah, he's got lots of, there's loads and loads of looks like that, in my opinion. You know, there's loads, mate. You know, I've got some good mates who've reached out to me and they've got no, they've identified themselves that I've got like problems, but both said to me, I'm going to fucking mental, mate. And I say, you know, go get some help. But they're like, I can't, you know, I've only got a few years left to pushing. You know, I don't want to get kicked out. Fucking hell, mate. And it's a difficult, really, really difficult one. Cause you can't say no, mate, go and get help because you won't get kicked out because they might do it. They might do it. You just don't know how bad, how bad they are. But it's this really being, obviously, if they just think I'll just stick it out for another five years, six years. And so that's their symptoms are only going to get worse for that period of time. And it's more, more shit to undo when they do eventually go and get some help. There's loads going to get to let it help privately. You know, I've got mates who've done that as well. Going to see psychologists and psychiatrists privately, you know, in confidence and, you know, the military don't even know. They just, you know, they're getting therapy, the web therapy, you sort of, you know, they poor bloke. There must be thousands of them out there. Yeah, I mean, there's guys and I'm guessing girls, but obviously our experience is more with blokes, joining up with a lot of damage, isn't it? And then the militaries are strange environment. Like you said, when you go downtown for a beer, you're constantly thinking, is this going to escalate into violence now? And how's it going to, you know, and it's mad, isn't it? It's mad that the damage you were thinking about inflicting on someone who's a complete stranger. Yeah, and it's constant as well. You know, it's like you say, mate, it's all the time. Yeah, I mean, yeah, I think I missed your point, but yeah, originally, but the chart, yeah, they're bringing stuff into the military. I think you're right, mate. I think there's loads of blokes who do that a lot. And you just don't realize it. When I started getting psychotherapy, you know, my psychologist, who I saw a couple that were really good, and they were bringing up childhood stuff. And, you know, I even said, I said to my psychologist, I had in Plymouth for a long time. I said, look, to be honest, I think we're done. You know, I don't want to keep talking about it. I think it's fucking, everyone improves from shit when they're a kid, and mine was no different than anyone else's. And she kind of put it into perspective. And there's a few things that nothing outrageous really happened to me when I was a kid, but they obviously, it took me a long time to accept that I had a big effect on my sort of outlook on the world and all the rest of them sort of shaped the way I am as an adult. And it's like, actually, it's good to address them, even though, you know, you just need someone to point them out to you. Just a lot of people, there was some domestic violence in the house and shit like that. And, you know, with my mum, getting beaten up and stuff. And I, you know, as a young kid, I couldn't do, you know, me and my brother tried to stop it and we couldn't. I mean, I've really had a massive effect on me, it made me very protective, you know. We've been really protective of my blokes, you know. So even if I think they've done something wrong, they tell me they haven't. You know, sort of, okay, I trust you, you're my mate, you're one of my blokes. I look after, you know, I'll take their side, you know, because you think you've got, someone's got to look after, someone's got to look after the blokes, you know, and a lot of the time. And they need to know that someone's got their back as well. So I think from a, yeah, probably that pretty came from a childhood where I didn't, you know, I didn't really have someone who had my back. My mum tried to, you know, my mum did, but, you know, something I think as a young lad, you need a male role model, a father figure, if somebody can beat someone up, you know, if you go to them and say, this person picking on me or this person just smacked my mum, then there should be a bloke who steps up. So don't worry about that, mate. That's fucking awesome, that sort of. But yeah, there's obviously a lot of stuff happens as you're a kid. I know now, but it's a very long time to accept it. That shapes you as an adult, you know? I've only read one recurring nightmare, and that was this man who we were kind of on the run from escaping evasion as a kid, me, my mum, and the older brother. He was assault, he was beating up my mum and she'd been a prick. And then we would like, we got moved out of our house, but I guess the council, we'd like put in these different hostels and be a bed and breakfast. I don't know how long it lasted, but for a while. And then I used to have this recurring nightmare that was running down this country lane. And then his car, he had his orange car, and his orange car pulled up at the end of the lane at the junction. And it was like, and the window would go down, and he'd just turn and look at me, really, your sinister. And then I used to wake up terrified and screaming, because he got me, and he fucking, he called me. But that's the only recurring nightmare I ever had, you know? And a lot of people who've got, not PTSD or whatever, that's a big problem for them, is I had a lot of hard muckets here. I have a lot of aggression in my sleep. I don't have like, I know I don't have nightmares, but I do wake up shouting a lot. Throwing punches around. My missus is, I fucking know why she stays in bed with me, because she must be fucking on edge, massively. She says, you know, fucking you, and then you shout me last night, and all this. But I was like, yeah, we'll go aggressive. But yeah, mate, my only ever recurring nightmare is that. And that's from probably under, I left that town when I was seven. So I was around six, seven years old. And this is where that's got a fear came from. But yeah, it kind of shaped you as an adult. I don't want anyone else to be scared of anybody, or, you know, I want other people to know that, you know, someone's got their back, sort of shit, you know. Yes. What was, is it called EMDR? Yeah, mate. Can you tell us what that, what does that involve? Yeah, EMDR stands, I just saw this the other day, I've always forget what it stands for. Eye movement, desensitization, something. But it's EMDR, if people type in, they'll soon find it. Yeah, EMDR. So my mate of mine did it, actually. I was in a job in a place in Warminster. I know him, he had a cool job, he was fucking angry. And a friend of mine in that place was going through, and he told me about it. This is before I went and saw help, actually. He was doing it with, like... He was doing it with lights. So you could see, there'd be a light. I think the way he explained it was like the light on the car kit, you know, a night rider. And he'd follow it with his eyes like this. Basically, they'd get you to, it's a way of reprogramming, I think, as you are. So they reprogram a memory, sort of like dig into a memory. And what they try and do is, through this EMDR, they just kind of put a memory out of where it is, i.e. whatever part of the brain where it gives you grief and stick it somewhere else in your brain. Where it doesn't sort of give you grief or flashbacks and all that. Would you say it works or...? Yeah, well, I know a few people have done it and really, really think it was really good. I did a lot of CBT, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, and I did quite a few EMDR sessions. So I was quite regularly seeing a psychiatrist for about five years, to be honest. Not every week, but most weeks. And then, yeah, the EMDR, there's one where I think, and the more I thought about it, I think that it did work pretty well because it's something I remember, it's like a vision, actually. It's not even a memory, basically. So she'll say, right, is there something that comes to mind? Or you're being conversational, so hold that thought and then get out the light sort of buzzes. I had buzzes, they worked better for me, not lights. But I hold on one in the hand, one in the hand, and there's got this one a buzz and that one a buzz. I was shutting my eyes and my eyes closed. I'd be looking at this one, then this one, like that. So I'm looking, and you get a picture in your mind. So it could be something like you're out on a patrol. Like, well, you make a job, got shot, could be that. And you might, I remember lying on the floor, you know, I'd say, okay, picture that. And you shut your eyes or whatever, you think about it, buzz, buzz, buzz, buzz, buzz. And then that picture kind of develops in your mind. That's how it worked for me, mate. It's like, she might say, what's happening now? What do you feel? Well, then you might say, I can really smell, and it might be the smell that you really, can really smell it in that memory. And you go, and I can feel it's really cold and the grass was wet and bloody bar. You know, I can hear someone shouting over there. And I'm like, okay, buzz, buzz, buzz, buzz, buzz, buzz, buzz. What do you see now? And that picture, over 40 minutes or so, that picture develops. And with me, it kind of developed into something. It didn't actually happen. It was just something I'm like, I'm running and I'm doing this. And then the anger I had at the start, at the end, there was no anger. And even though it was weird, mate, it was weird because I felt guilty for not feeling angry because I was picturing a friend of mine getting shot and killed. And in the vision, I could see the two, but even I wasn't there actually. In my vision, I could see the two men who'd shot him. And it was like grinning, like really pleasing themselves. And I was like, I can kill them. And I was really, really angry. And then at the end of the EMDR, I said, I could see, I'm still seeing them two blokes. Do you know what they're doing? I said, they're just sitting there, they're just sitting there, they just look, they just didn't look evil like they did at the start. They looked like two, just two blokes sitting there, relaxing, like having a sandwich or something, you know? Having a chat. And then I thought, and I felt guilty because I wanted to, I still want to fucking kill them. But actually, I was like, I was just thinking, there's just two blokes out there. I don't know whether that was the intended outcome of that or what, but at the end of that session, I didn't, I wasn't, I mean, I was like foaming at the mouth when I first saw them in this vision. I was like fucking killing, I was snarling and so, so angry, you know? Yeah, and she said, you know, Woody, what are you thinking now? And I said, nothing, you know, it's just two blokes sat on a hill shooting shit. Yeah, just, and I think that might have been what the intention was to, that one might well have worked. And basically, EMDL is quite, I think it's quite complicated, but it's quite simple as far as the person doing it. It's just, the first person I did it with, I've just seen myself on the camera, he held his finger like this and he moved it across like that. He said, follow my finger, like that. And he's like, right, I forgot. And he stopped. Now, and he's like, what do you see now? You know, describe the picture now. And they go, okay, not describe it, and they do this again. Okay, follow my finger. And they do that again. But every time he got to there, I couldn't help but look him in the eye. He really distracted me and I went, and I look him in the eye there. And it's just wound me up, mate. And I was just like, I'm just fucking, and that did the opposite. That actually made me get really vexed and really wound up. That wasn't a good session. That ended quite badly. But yeah, EMDR, I'll tell you, I'd give it all a go, you know, medication and EMDR, CBT, just taught a lot of psychotherapy. I mean, I'm sure you've been through it, mate. It's a lot of, it's just reflection, isn't it? You know, it's just a couple of well-posed questions and it really gets you thinking. Yeah, I've never actually, I've done it on myself, if that makes sense. I've never actually been for therapy, but I've had so much time, when you have drug problems, you spend a lot of time alone, sometimes feeling fucking awful. And it's in those moments, you just, my brother, you say, Chris, you think too deeply, you think too deeply. And I say, I'm fucking dying. That's why, you know, I've got to think, I've got through that sort of process that kind of worked it all out over the years. And it's like Dave Radband, who we've had on the show, Dave's a former paro and he's done this ayahuasca treatment. So James English has made a documentary about it. James English being another podcaster. And I think, James certainly asked me, Chris, would you give it a go? And I said, well, I would for the experience, but I don't think I've got anything to heal now. I don't think there's any magic. I might be wrong, Steve. I might be completely ignorant and arrogant, but I just think, I don't know, I just get yourself onto a plateau. It's like nothing's really changed. Your history is still your history. But you've got your head in the best enough place to deal with those traumatic memories or whatever they are. And yeah, I don't know if I'm making sense. I'm really good at dealing with adult shit, you know? I mean, I've been in two situations where the person with me's died. And that sort of stuff just doesn't affect me at all. And I think what it is is because my childhood stuff is like way, way worse, you know? Way more traumatic when you're a child and you're scared and you don't fucking understand shit that's going on. As an adult, you can rationalize things and go, well, it's a bit tragic, but no one said life's easy, right? Yeah, that's for the mate. But I don't know, I think the moral of the story is that anyone out there don't do this on, you know, reach out, especially if you're really, really feeling awful because it is just thoughts in your head, isn't it? At the end of the day, you'll feel completely different in a year's time. You just feel really bad now and it's easy to get lost in that moment, isn't it? Yeah, well, yeah. I mean, I was really skeptical about mental health stuff and obviously you're here all the time now and everyone's got a label and fucking ADHD, PTSD, like ADD. Everyone seems to have got something, anxiety. I was kind of one of them, like, of course, you know, not that I hate the man up culture, but I was just like, every fucking hour, it's just like life, like you say, no, life. That's just part of life. I got to a point where, oh, I got to a point where I'm gonna fucking, I'm gonna fucking kill someone. I'm gonna fucking kill someone because they've done something trivial and they've just caught me in a bad day. I'm just gonna go fucking, I'm just gonna batter them to death. That's how I honestly felt, you know, and I'm not big. I don't claim to be any super, super hard bloke or anything like that. I just thought, I think this is probably is gonna happen, you know, because I'm getting so fucking angry about loads of stuff all the time and just constantly thinking about violence and inflicting violence or defending myself from violence. I was like, right, I'm leaving the army in a few months. I need to, I want to get this addressed while I can. And I went to see someone and basically just told him, I was just totally honest about everything, you know, and let them see what they think. Maybe I'm just fucking normal. Maybe I'm not there for, I'm gonna, I really do feel like I'm gonna fucking end up killing someone. And yeah, they kind of got me into the system quite quickly, I suppose, and into a psychologist, psychiatrist, you know, and on medication. And for me, it worked. You know, there was a lot of stuff I didn't know was there. It's like, you know, if you've already worked out yourself, I suppose that's different. But, you know, I was very skeptical and cynical about it all. But, you know, I'm quite a big believer in it now. I don't think it's a massive healer. I think the medication is the best thing for me to be fair, even after all the therapy. You know, I would encourage people to go, just go and get help. I mean, the doctor might just say, yeah, you know, you're all right, mate. Isn't this fucking wrong with you? It's more advanced now, though, as well. I mean, back in my day, I mean, my struggles were, God, I don't know, 15-year ago. I mean, really, no, 20, coming up for probably 25 years, and back then, you didn't really have all this mental health stuff. You didn't have, you know, you wouldn't go and see your GP and get, oh, well, maybe you would, but my experience was like, you go and see some GP and then he'd come out with something knobby and you'd, I just would think, fuck you. Some of it was pride, but some of it was just coming from that military background where things are just straight on and they are as they are. And to have someone with a clipboard going, right. Do you think the television's talking to you? And I said, fuck off, mate. Remember once they gave me this big bag of medication and I just went out with the surgery, just shoved it in a bin. No, it was like, you just, you're trying, I just felt that they were trying to fix me, but I wasn't broken, but I did have behavioral signs that people didn't understand. Friends at home is all just too complicated. But the point is, if you're struggling, reach out because there is just such a better life when you get your head around all that shit, you know. And there's a lot out there now, like you said, Chris, there's loads of stuff now that wasn't around a while ago. I helped run a mental health support program in Newquay where we get people in this. It's part of the NHS's suicide prevention program. And we just do survival, survival-based stuff, really, we do get a fire on, make a brew, learn some knots, learn how to make a fire, go foraging, all this sort of stuff, you know. And it's like, it's not familiar. We've had a few ex-service people and serving service people come through. It's for anyone, really. And just being in a group of people where they're not getting judged or, you know, we don't actually, we don't actively get anyone to talk about mental health at all. But everyone kind of understands that they're all subliminally, I suppose. Everyone knows that they're all there for the same reason because they've got some sort of problem. And people just end up talking anyway. And they know they're not getting judged because they know the person they're talking to is they probably feel a bit fucking mental and all. So that works out quite well. I've had some really good feedback on that with people. Just like to just come and, even if we just go for a walk on the beach and talk or listen to me waffle on the back, what you can and can't eat, fucking... Yeah, send me a link. If you want me to publish that below our video, send me the link if that can, if you think that can help people, is what I'm trying to say. Yeah. Well, I think the funding we had for it has just run out. So we're looking to get it going again in January, hopefully. Because, yeah, that's been... I know it's helped a good few people, like, you know. But yeah, there's a lot more systems out there now. But folks in the military don't realize how much you are sometimes. Because, you know, we're all the same, ain't we? And we're in a group of, you might be in a group, say you're in a room of eight blokes or whatever. All of you are thinking of these crazy stuff all the time. You're all on high alert. You're all hyper vigilant. Everyone's thinking about, you know, if this book kicks off or, you know, fucking... Everyone's wanging up the opposition, you know, whenever you're going to a pub, I think you're like, all right, knock it out of here, mark it out of here, all right, any of you, if I get hard work, you know, but it's all like, you know, big Jonas with us, he'll sort him out. Everyone's sort of thinking about what if all the time? When you're talking to someone who doesn't think like that, it's like, all right, you know, when you start mixing with civilians or sane people, they're like, what the fuck, you know, are you thinking about, you know, are you thinking about, you know, how are we going to cut this bloke up and put him in his room, if we've got a bag big enough to bury him on the morrow, and they're like, what? No, what's on that, are you? You're like, no, no. What? No. Yeah, it is funny when you leave the military, you have to get to that point and you realise you can't just fight people. You know, civvies don't do that. And it's annoying, especially when you get some smarmy little twat in an office and you know that person who's going, all right, Chris, good weekend, and you're like, you fucking little bastard, you went to the bus on Friday, I know you did, and complained about my work, you know, and, but it's weird, it's that that is normal for a lot of people. You know, they don't see that behaviour as being like backstabby or disloyal or wrong. They've been so conditioned because they've only ever had a regular job, that that's how you do things. And it's easy to see why service personnel start to get frustrations, and you know, and then when you mix chuck alcohol in a mix or all other stuff, it all starts to spiral out of control, doesn't it? Oh, mate, yeah. I mean, I used to be, I went for a fave, mate. About the time I went and got help was, I was just fucked, mate, I was exhausted because my brain was just constantly, I think it's really hard to describe to someone who doesn't think like that, but every single person I saw, I did do an assessment on them. And it had always ended, you know, and within a second I'd worked out. I always remember it, like walking across, I think there's a bridge near me, a narrow bridge, and you have to walk past people quite closely, you know? How do we think, you know, if someone bumps into a kid or someone swears or someone does this and it's like, what if? And it's like, it might be, you might just, all this happens in a nanosecond, doesn't it? And like, if this bloke, there might be someone walking towards me, he looks like a bit of a, might be a bit of a knobber. Like, if he swears or spits, it's like on the way towards me in front of my kid, you know, and I say, oh, you fucking knob, you know, oh, belling, whatever, because I might not be wanting to swear. All these things go, what am I going to say to him? And then what's he going to say back? And I go, what are you going to do about it? And I think, well, am I going to say, I'll just fuck off and keep walking? Or am I going to fucking punch him? Am I going to throw him off the bridge? You know, if I punch him, if he's going to punch me back, what if he pulls a knife? And it's like a thousand scenarios running through my head. And within a second I've decided whether or not I'm prepared to murder this person if they spit in the next two seconds, you know, because they might be prepared to murder me if I punch him or say, oh, fucking don't do that. You know, and then we'll go, what are you going to do to try and stab me straight away? You know, but my brain was like that all the time. I think it must be really hard for someone who hasn't felt like that to understand how fast you can come to these conclusions like, I'll fucking kill it. Yeah, if he spits, I'm like, I have to kill him. You know, it's like, and then obviously it's not just him, there's someone behind him. And I thought about the same thing about them. And it's like every single person, pretty much, I'd say, my brain was racing like that. And it's like, mate, I was just absolutely exhausted. It's just like, Yeah. Yeah. It's like psychologically draining. Draining, yeah. I get it. Trauma is directly, can be, you know, because the second you're in any sort of pressure situation, it's triggering this flight or flight mechanism that you lost control of as a child because you're too young to be able to, you know, so something like that. And you're just immediately hyper fucking, and that's putting cortisol into your body. And cortisol must be a massively strong chemical. Yeah. And you've got that rushing around your body all day and you're trying to perform and you don't want to let people down and you don't want to take time off because, you know, life just throws shit at us all the time, doesn't it, you know? Yeah. And then the next thing, you know, it's like you're running on burnout. And then here's the thing is, I don't know, I think I'd say to anyone in that situation, just meditate, you know, just shut the fucking noise off in a quiet room and just shut. But as far as tackling that trauma, I don't know if you can, you know? I don't know. I'm still learning a lot about it, Steve, you know? I'm still keen to learn more. And it's like even hard to learn stuff because life's always throwing stuff at you, you know? Yeah. I did that for like pretty much five years of it, you know, going to see psychologists and that. And I learned, you know, I learned a lot. I'm no fucking expert in anything, that's all. But, you know, I've got a good basic understanding of how it all affected me anyway, you know? So I can kind of put stuff in a fair amount of stuff in the context and sort of empathize with a lot of the blokes who were struggling. I've seen, you know, I've watched blokes as well. I've watched a couple of blokes, make someone, and I think he's fucking losing it, you know? And then sure as shit, a few months down the line, you know? Or even after they've got out a year or two later, they've said to me, you know, I was pretty much had a breakdown, mate, you know? You can just see the little signs, and you think, oh, I used to do that. It's just, they just look on edge, you know? It's really fidgety and just, you know, it's kind of, you see it in their eyes. You're just like, fucking, are you all right, mate? You know, everything all right. You know, the blokes are like, yeah, yeah, of course, and I'm just tired, but some blokes will talk to you, but a lot of them just boil it up. Yeah, so sometimes it's your best just to accept it, and, you know, if you get a fucking headache, you might go see the doctor. If you had a recurring headache, you're going to see the doctor. If you had a really bad back pain, you're going to see the doctor. You might as well go see the doctor if you just constantly thinking about fucking being killed or killing people or, you know, can't relax. I'd start projects, man, midnight. I'd have some flat-pack furniture, and my Mrs would be like, when it came close to me leaving, my regular service, she used to be like, you're not fucking seriously, she's not starting to do that now. It'd be unboxing a chest of drawers or something, but, you know, I'm not going to do it, or am I, you know, I'm not doing it. I'm just having a look to see what it looks like. I mean, sure, I'll be there till four o'clock in the morning, just like hyper, because I'm just like, just couldn't relax at all. I'm just going to go for a run at midnight and stuff like that. What are you doing? You look like I'm doing it, and I'm putting my running shoes on, and I'm fucking out. Mental, man. Well, Steve, congratulations on the book, mate. Let's just, my wonderful editor, Luke, will put, will be putting the book cover into our video, so don't worry about it. I'm going to hold it up anyway. Really, really good, really good read. Recommend it to any military people out there. Definitely, if you've been in the Paras, you'll want to read this. Certainly fascinating to read it as a boot net. Any plans for any more? Well, actually, I've done a couple more already, mate. Yeah, I've unlocked a follow-up to that one, which is... Oh, yeah, you have, yeah, you have. I think one of the stories in it is called Paras, in this one, it's Paras versus Marines, actually. But that one... If you can see that. Yeah. Yes. That one, that's like a follow-up to that. Very similar, but it's not that I haven't gone... There's more other people's stories and there's mad stories about a bloke. We've all got them mates in the military, just in the fucking engine. And these are stories that shouldn't get lost, aren't they, really, you know? Yeah. They shouldn't get lost to the sands of time, or whatever the expression is. It's like, Mike, I don't know anything about Mike. I mean, I know my old man. We don't get on any more, but I don't know any stories about him. I couldn't tell you one sort. Well, when my dad was younger, he did that. I've got none of them sort of stories. And that's one of the reasons I've read that. You'd be nuts, too. It's like, I try and be honest with my kids, and I don't lie about any of them. You know, I don't tell them I was a great kid or anything like that, and I was a bastard kid. And I was a pain in the ass. And I don't mind telling them that, because I'm just, you know, not a lie to them. But there's loads of stories. And now they've got, basically, they've got two books worth of like stories I would tell. You, I mean, you've met up for a pint. These are the sort of stories that you'd tell me, or I'd tell you, you know? At least I've got that to leave behind for the kids, you know? And you say, oh, actually, my dad wasn't really that much of a boring old fart who did some cool stuff when he was younger. Yeah. My little lad, my dad just wrote fucking drug books and books about running. That's it. You don't run in every day, do you? Yeah, I do. I do. You know, it's wonderful to have found something in my life that I really get great pleasure from, you know? It was different back in the day. You had to run and you didn't always want to, did you? You know, especially if you were like me and I was always shit at it. But now I do it because I've realised the importance of me time to actually just have some time for me and I don't really get that in a day. I'm always on this fucking thing here, you know? Editing or talking to people or da-da-da. Now we're getting the Global Vections Alliance off the ground. It's just a workload. It's almost beyond my capability, Steve, trying to coordinate the fledgling beginning of what is essentially a global organisation with very limited resources, finance and manpower. It really does put you through your paces. So the running thing is it's me, but I fuck it up a lot because to get the most out of it, you've got to switch off. Yeah. Sometimes I'll find myself running a mile and I'm still just got the recurring thought about work and I'm, whoa, Chris, stop it, stop it. Think about the beach. Think about being in the jungle. Do you know what I'm purposely trying to do? Because running is obviously a form of meditation, isn't it? And when you meditate, you meditate purposely to stop the noise, to stop the noise. And so I do have to remind myself more and run to stop thinking about some work issue or some podcast I've got to do or there's something and it's like, well, just stop. To be honest, it's normally some sort of conflict thing, you know, some human relationship that's become awkward. And then you're like, ah, and yeah. But no, going back to running, I like it. I mean, I'm 52 now, right? I know I don't look it, but here's the thing. On my life, I'm fitter and faster than when I was in the Marines, right? Seriously, I can run out the door now and do it. If I had to, on a running track, probably do a sub seven minute mile. Nice. And I was never like that, you know? I was never, not even in the coming out of training. In fact, coming out of training, I was probably the worst runner in my life. I was exhausted. I was just shattered and drained. Yeah. And yet now I run up the steepest hill in my city every morning and woe betide anyone. And it gets clever and tries to take me. I make them suffer, Steve. You know, you get people, they shoot by you on the flat on their bike, and then the hill's coming up, and I will take you down. And I haven't failed yet, right? It's my silly little Sega mate. Have you tried jiu-jitsu at all? No, I'll be honest. But last time I did any sort of martial arts, I did some crabmigal with a mate fucking around in Israel, right? Oh, yeah. And we were on our knees, and we were trying to do that thing where you've got to hit and push him over, or something, you know, some silly little exercise. And when he went, go, immediately, just like fucking thrust me back. And I tore both the meniscus, menisci, in both my knees, felt it tear. And I love running, right? So that took about two years to heal. And I'm always avoid injury. Most runners' injuries are missed, they're in your head. You get a bit of a sore knee and you think it's something... Most of it can... You either run through it and it goes away, or you can put it right. Torn meniscus, they normally give you an operation on it. But all they're doing is key old surgery. They're grinding away all the rough bits that have torn. They can't fix it. So technically, it's like the more they take away, the less you've got for the rest of your life. Yeah. So I didn't have any operation or nothing. I just stick to my vegetable diet. And within two years... Well, within a year, I was back running again. And within two years, it's completely healed now. Not sure how we got on the subject. Oh, yeah, martial arts, wasn't it? So I'm kind of shy away from that jujitsu thing, because it really looks full-on. Well, mate, there's a... But the bloke where I train now, I train in Liskard, right? And he's an ex-raum-roon. You might even know him, local Mark Tucker. I can't remember what years he'd done. Tommy. You might have been called Tommy. His name is Mark. Yeah, we served together back in the day. Yeah, well, he's got a really good club in Liskard, mate. You might want to... I'll send you a link if you want. Yeah. He's a mega bloke, mate. I've been training with him for the last, I don't know now, probably six months, maybe near on a year now. He's an absolute ninja, mate. Loves him, he's got a Royal Marine flag up. It's horrible for me, because I get beat up by a Marine a couple of times a week. Good night, man, isn't it? Mark's quite short. Yeah. He was huge back in the day, he used to be a doorman. That's him, yeah. He used to work the doors in Plymouth. Yeah, yeah. Well, next time you're up, give us a better weather and then I'll pop over for a cuppa or whatever you guys do. All right, mate, mega. I'll probably avoid a scrap, because I'm fucking too old for that shit now. Remember, it's Mark 49, I think Mark, I think he's 49, pushing 50. Yeah. I'm 47. Let's give you a go, mate. You know, I don't get injured in jujitsu, it's all martial arts, I don't normally get injured. Yeah, mate, I'll come over and check it out. My little lad goes to Taekwondo and I'm really pleased about that, that it's given him a bit of confidence and stuff. And, you know, he's been going since he was four, about four, and so he's been going about two and a half years now. And yeah, you can't say anything bad about martial arts, can you, you know? No, mate, brilliant. Especially the discipline, the lessons they get with it, you know, stand still, pay attention, you know? No, don't do that. That's good to get on board as well, it's good to get beat up every now and then, keep your feet on the ground. Yes. Right, brother, I'll cut you loose. Great chatting, Steve. Yeah, nice to meet you, Chris. Yeah, they crack me up, they have videos you do in the morning, and little stories, mate. I love little stories like that, they crack me up, man. Yeah. Well, I try and do a mix between something a bit inspirational for people who might be struggling and just a few old dits and... I'll be honest, I'm not... Military's a long time ago for me, I don't really live there anymore, if that makes sense. I can understand it's different for people who spent, you know, 20, 30 years in the trade, but what I do find is it's really good for getting young men's attention. They're all a bit too obsessed with the military, to be honest. Not every young man, but a lot of them, you know, I think it's from the Call of Duty and stuff. And I personally think it's the psychopaths brainwashing them for their wars. And I love turning the tables on the psychos and using their methods against them. So I now get young men come to the podcast or my Instagram or whatever it is, and I can give them some real life lessons, you know, the important stuff that really does matter, not firing fucking guns and playing soldiers and stuff, but stuff that will, you know, help you get the most out of life and all the stuff that no one told us is stuff that kid is kids, you know? We were told to be seen and not heard and smacked around if we, you know, people even perceived we were misbehaving and, you know, you didn't have adults go, right, look, people are going to tell you life's like this, but they're fucking, that's all shit. They're a bunch of cowards. It's really like, so it's kind of you say, mate, thank you, and I'm just trying to do my bit, you know? Yeah, Steve, stay on the line so I can thank you properly, but massive thanks again to our friends at home. Big love to you all. Look after yourselves. If you can like and subscribe, that'd be wonderful and I hope you've enjoyed this as much as I have. Thank you.