Sometimes it’s not meant to be

I got Ben’d

I hope everyone is good?

The plan this week was for me to head down to HR4K in Hereford to finalise the handover of the responsibility for printing all of SEG’s gear to those guys. It’s been a funny old first half of the year having already changed printers once! But if something isn’t right you have to recognise that and make changes even if it’s incredibly difficult or the last thing you need. You have to find a way. Now instead of ‘outsiders’ printing the gear, this feels a lot more like keeping it in family. From a practical standpoint it also means that when there are issues I know they can be fixed with a 2 min chat or a text, because the people on the other end understand what SEG is and care.

It turned out that something I thought was going take a couple of days only took about 2 hours. I think this was because I had my shit together having only just been through this process a couple of months ago. What that meant was I was essentially free to get dragged into whatever madness Ben was up to.

There may be some of you who don’t know who Ben Garwood or his business HR4K is. Ben is an old friend from when I first joined 2 Para in 1997/8, he’d been there around a year. I left in 2002 to go and do my year of psychedelic madness and then Uni before Afghan proper kicked off and watching 3 Para in Sangin on TV made me rejoin and go to SFSG. During that period of me being a civvy, Ben transferred to the REME for a couple of years, then did Pathfinder selection, before ending up in the SAS, so UKSF is where our paths crossed again once I’d rejoined. He did a similar thing to me in that he started a business, HR4K, whilst still serving, which then provided him with an option to leave when he was done in the military.

Ben can take nothing and turn it into something overnight. This is quite a talent but can also be his worst enemy because he ends up spinning too many plates. If you’re standing too close to him, you’ll end up with a plate in your hand with no idea how it got there! This is what myself and the lads at Contact Coffee Co call ‘getting Ben’d’.

I was down for a couple of days so I figured I’d get all of my SEG stuff sorted and then in the evening we could chill and have a chat, my plan was to get a Podcast out of this, even if it was a just 30 mins of gobbing off. Ben had other ideas!

Turns out what was actually going to happen was I was getting dragged down to 1 Rifles camp in Chepstow as manual labour, to help pick up an old pool table he’d blagged off an old REME mate for £250. So we head off, tracing the old route I used to take down the M50 back to St Athan for work on a Sunday. Then through the backroads around Ross-on-Wye with Ben recounting how this was all Knights Templar land at one point, interspersed with many other historical accounts and anecdotes. It was a nice evening and the drive was a good excuse for a catch up and vent, something we ALL need sometimes.

We got down to 1 Rifles and met the two poor blokes who’d been dicked to hang around and wait for us. They helped us get the pool table in Bens’ trailer, before Ben did his HR4K/SEG sales pitch to them and made them add the brand pages on Instagram before we left! Interesting that the younger of the two lads had no Instagram account, we’re probably going to have to embrace TikTok fully one day.

It was a similar story on the drive back to Hereford except this time we were on geopolitics and the future. I think my version was slightly darker than Ben’s and I wondered if this is because he has kids and I don’t. I think if I did have them I’d want to believe their lives would be better than mine, even if they were different.

By the time we got back it was dark and I figured it was pretty unlikely I’d be able to get a chat recorded, but I was still going to try. Ben had been on the phone earlier to organise a few extra hands to help get the table and the heavy slate playing surface out of the trailer - it was complete news to me that the playing surface was made of solid slate! Turns out the extra hands let us down and when we arrived it was just us, so I figured we’d leave it until tomorrow. Nope, Ben wanted to have crack at moving it and why not, we’re both ex Paratroopers, we can move a pool table.

The trailer was about 4.5ft high and Ben at 5ft something could get in there without bending too much, he’s got he build of Gimli. Me at 6ft+ was never getting in there so I was the ‘bottom man’ as we got hold of the slate, which was leant against the inner wall of the trailer, and we started to manoeuvre it down the ramp.

At this point I have no real idea what actually happened, but we were both really struggling to keep control of the slate in a vertical position, it’d have been much easier laid flat. I think, the corner of the slate him my foot somehow and after many expletives, ended up out of control and fell smashed on the floor. AWKWARD!

Kudos to Ben here because it was really obvious that he was VERY angry internally, but we’ve never had a cross word the whole time we’ve known each other and he wasn’t going to start now. So we picked it up and put in in the skip opposite HR4K.

It seemed to me that this wasn’t the time to ask my mate if he fancied squaring me away with a Podcast episode! Instead I thought I’d appeal to his stomach and suggested we get a kebab. Cue lots of jokes from him about the kebab being the first of many things that were going on ‘the slate’!

So there we go, the best laid plans etc. But in testament to Ben’s legendary networking abilities, the next morning whilst I was chatting to a couple of ARV Police guys who’d popped into HR4K for a brew - one of whom turned out to be a SEG customer - Ben had already sourced a new slate for the pool table for free and I didn’t need to put my hand in my pocket for anything but kebabs!

So that leaves us without the Podcast episode I was planing to drop this week. But I think I’ve got a solution. I’ve had a chat with Hugh Keir, who some of you may know. Ex 3 Para sniper and the host of the H Hour Podcast. We’ve come up with a plan to start a regular - maybe weekly - Podcast episode that goes though whatever has been happening that week in the news and general current affairs. We do this anyway most days via voice note so as we both have Podcasting experience, why not record it. We’re looking to get the first one in the bag on Sunday and I’ll drop it as soon after that as I can. Don’t worry, there is still the intention to get Ben and Luke back on for something akin to the old “Group Podcast’, but we need to let Ben recover from his ordeal first.

As ever, thanks for your patience and support. I’ll see you Sunday.

Gaz