Rick Brindle

  No specific band, but they did go on tour with Saxon. Saxon: how much more metal can one band be? And the answer is none, none more metal than this. This is Spinal Tap is an absolute genus work of art, poking fun at the entire genre, while at the same time completely endearing itself to fans of the very music form that it most certainly doesn’t take very seriously. When the film was released, loads of metal bands thought it was about them, and quite a few thought that it was actually a real documentary, it was that accurate and true to life. The Stonehenge scene is a piss-take of Black Sabbath’s Born Again tour, where the stone plinths were actually too big for the venues. The lost backstage scene apparently happened to Tom Petty. The Air Force base scene apparently happened to Uriah Heep. Dokken’s George Lynch said ‘That’s us.’ I’m a heavy metal fan and I absolutely love this film. I could literally watch it again and again, all night long, if you saw what I did there. Cold Stee...

  Personally, I really hope it does. Sure, there are close military and intelligence sharing ties (five eyes, yada yada yada), and yes, British pilots train on the F35 in America, but that’s only because we actually use the F35, and do you know what, we didn’t have to. We cold have made our own, arguably (Typhoon), or we could have bought elsewhere (the Rafale is sexy as hell, which is reason enough to have it on the strength). Plenty enough other countries also have their own relationships with the US, and I’d argue that Israel has a much better and more beneficial one with them than us, any day of the week. Quite why we’re so obsessed with calling it special as well, I find somewhat humiliating and demeaning. It really does pint us as a needy, clearly weaker partner, desperate for validation by being thrown crumbs of affection, and magnifying it into something to really cherish. And should the US administration ever find itself headed by a power-mad narcissist who doesn’t give a ...

  First, find a water supply. If you don’t live near a river or sizable lake, find out how to get there safely, avoiding whatever post-apocalyptic threats you may face in this new world. As well as that, or even instead of if you’re a bloody long way from anything resembling H2O, find a way to collect water. A water butt would be a good go to, and keep you fingers crossed that in your post-apocalyptic scenario, carbon use has dropped off a cliff, the climate has miraculously returned to its normal cycle of changes over millennia and not decades, and you get some rainfall that you can actually rely on. But don’t hold your breath on that one. You can also stretch out a groundsheet with a weight and hole at the centre, and a bucket underneath it to collect overnight condensation, but I really don’t think you’ll get very much by that method. If you can score some purification tabs, that will really help, especially when you’re drinking the stuff, and there likely won’t be any NHS to cl...

 You learn to  Lace up your boots so that a Gurkha recognises you’re a British soldier. While the British military might well drop the odd bollock here and there at a strategic and cultural level, they are absolutely on point when it comes to tactics, and what that means is this: if the theatre of operations even mentions the word ‘jungle,’ no damn way are they doing it without the Gurkhas being there. It’s just not going to happen. But what this means for every Tommy out there is this: don’t go freelance with your boot laces, and only, only ever lace them up in the regulation manner. Your literal life depends on this, and here’s why. The Gurkhas are so utterly badass that it’s an established fact that they will, at night, sneak up on literally anyone without them noticing, and again, without them knowing, feel in the darkness for the way their boots are laced up. If it’s anything other than regulation British, out comes the dreaded kukri, and it’s adios muchacho: one less ene...

A bonkers hotel, run by a bonkers manager (owner). Meet the crew We arrived in the afternoon, and while there was, of course, ample parking, there were no EV charging points, so I’m not sure how future-proof the place is. Thankfully though, there are a good dozen points nearby, so no real dramas there. Rain in summer, clearly pre-climate change What I was a little puzzled by was the sight of a tall, skinny man shouting obscenities at what I can only assume was his parked car, and then beating it with a length of foliage. Weird, but okay. Things got way weirder when it turned out that car-beating man was actually the hotel’s manager, although he was of course at pains to point out that he was the owner (maybe the owner needs to actually get a manager, I’d suggest). We’d booked our room over the phone - can you believe that they didn’t actually know what the internet was - and rocked up to reception. On that point, word of mouth advertising, never believe it! Anyway, at reception was a g...

  We Are Cold Steel , part two in the Cold Steel series, is free from Amazon for a short time. 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 improbable incident into another. They just want to m...

Sounds a lot like project Real Man, my very own fictionally created stance taken by Charlie Scudsen, an American President . But upon looking into this, it’s deliberate policy being rolled out by the actual US administration. "High-T Department": Hegseth approves testosterone screening in military Hegseth says he is authorising hormone screening to ensure US troops "operate at your absolute best". https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cn0nlx18rz0o It seems that Pete Hegseth wants older male members of the US military to have their testosterone levels topped up as their natural levels, like naturally, decline. His argument in favour of this is that soldiers will be more aggressive if they’re what he calls ‘High-T.’ It seems to only apply to male soldiers, because of course it’s only men in combat roles and only men who do the fighting. I can’t say that I’m convinced by any of this. I don’t think it’s been a problem for any military around the world in the past, and sol...