Rick Brindle

  Electric, every time,  and that’s even  after  the budget. Last year I drove a Hyundai i10. And it was a good, solid, reliable car, but every time I drove it I was putting carbon into the atmosphere and directly contributing to climate change. And to do it, I was paying about a thousand quid a year in petrol. Then I traded it for a Renault Zoe. It had 14k miles on the clock and cost £11k. The budget means I’ll have to pay 3p per mile in tax. That’s about 150 quid for the miles I tend to do, and my home charger adds about another 150 quid to ‘fill up.’ So compared to petrol, I’m still 700 quid better off for the same mileage, and I’m at least doing less damage to the climate. So for me it’s a no-brainer. Electric cars are cheaper to run, they’re better for the environment, and on a more mundane level, the ‘engine noise’ even sounds more modern. They are absolutely the future. Cold Steel on the Rocks   We Are Cold Steel   Cold Steel and the Underground Bone...

  It's Not For Everyone , my memoir of life inside the RAF Regiment is free to download for a limited time. Get your free copy now! What do you do when your dream job turns into a nightmare? Rick Brindle was a third generation military child. His father and grandfather served their whole lives in the Army, and all he wanted to do was be a soldier. In 1989 he joined the RAF Regiment. But life in the Regiment was a world away from what he thought it would be, and it quickly became toxic. Facing a culture of bullying, beatings, verbal abuse and sexual harassment, the community he wanted to be a part of became more like a prison. Most people around him went along with the abuse. Some agreed with it, some joined in, while the chain of command routinely looked the other way. Set over thirty years ago, this is a story of surviving abuse that still resonates today. It’s Not For Everyone is essential reading for anyone considering a military career. Sometimes funny, sometimes shocking, and ...

  Cold Steel and the Underground Boneyard , The third novel in the Cold Steel trilogy is free to download from Amazon for a limited time. Get your free copy now. Cold Steel are back! Their new album has just been released. Their previously cancelled Spanish tour dates have been rearranged, with the female trio and Spain’s biggest metal band, Damas Infernales, supporting. Cold Steel’s biggest asset though, is Johnny Faslane, their brutally talented manager. But even Johnny can’t fully eliminate Cold Steel’s innate ability to spectacularly destroy their prospects, and even before their second concert ends, the tour is scrapped after an ill-advised trip back to the eighties, and the band are put into creative deep freeze by their record company. Only an unprecedented event and a lot of money can possibly turn their fortunes around. Like a five hundred year old treasure hoard that a long dead pirate once offered in return for his life, treasure that has never been found. Cold Steel fin...

  We Are Cold Steel , the second novel in the Cold Steel series, is now free to download from Amazon for a limited time. Get your free copy now. A day after their historic concert on the Caribbean island of St Clements, heavy metal band Cold Steel are heroes. Now, all they have to do is stay out of trouble and enjoy a well-earned holiday until they start work on their next album. Except that the owner of the recording studio hates all things Cold Steel. Except that Cold Steel’s record company has blackmailed the studio into accepting them. Except that not all reporters are as friendly as band manager Johnny Faslane’s girlfriend, Rachel Shaw. With a tight deadline, Cold Steel have to get the next album out before their tour starts. They can’t afford any delays, and Johnny has his work cut out keeping the band in line. Feral former soldiers, reporters with an agenda, cake-obsessed studio execs and international criminals all work their way into the mix as the band hurtle from one imp...

  Unless you’re in charge, probably not you. And back in my day, weapons-wise at least, it really wasn’t that complicated. You either got the SA80 Or the Light Support weapon (LSW). And if you were a knob, you moaned about it, and if you weren’t you just got on with it. So, in basics, you learned how to use both, but it was your Drill Corporal who decided which one you used, and you damn well did as you were told. And once you got posted to a squadron, it would be either your section commander or detachment commander, depending if you were posted to field or air defence, who decided which of the above you used. Gimpy? Well in my day, if you were field, one of these bad boys might become your personal weapon. Rapier squadrons had one per crew, but it was a team weapon as opposed to individual, in the ‘very rare’ event that the Rapier kit stopped working. Boys probably got bigger toys now, but way back when, section battle drills demanded that you fire a 66mm at the enemy position be...

  The  MkIII Ford Cortina. This bad boy was the ultimate seventies plush-mobile. And don’t get me wrong, the Mk4 and 5 Cortinas were more modern looking, albeit a bit boxy, and you know what it’s like, the newer model always tends to make the older version look, well, old. And you know what, I couldn’t tell you a thing about the mark’s performance or reliability, I was only 11 when the seventies ended, so for me it was all about the look and the image. I loved the look of this beast, and yeah, if I could, I’d get me a hold of one and drop an all-electric engine into it, turning it into a reborn eco-wagon of green-powered salvation. Sister Alex   Cold Steel on the Rocks   We Are Cold Steel   Cold Steel and the Underground Boneyard   It's Not For Everyone

  Cold Steel on the Rocks , my debut novel and the first book in the Cold Steel trilogy, is now free to download from Amazon for a limited time. Get your free copy now. When the pirate, Blackbeard, buried his treasure, he could never have imagined that it would fall to the heavy metal band, Cold Steel, to come looking for it. Cold Steel, high-octane British rockers who came close to legendary status, until the release of their fourth album, when their excesses send them spiralling into terminal decline. Struggling small-time band manager Johnny Faslane, in the right place at the right time, lands the dream job of managing Cold Steel, and then has the seemingly impossible mission of turning the band around. Cold Steel’s singer, Maxwell Diabolo, claims to have a treasure map that he thinks will lead him to Blackbeard’s lost riches. With the band bent on a terrifying path of self-destruction, Johnny wonders if they will even complete the tour, much less get to the Caribbean to embark ...