Day 17 Week 3

This is just so wierd. With the passage of time normality has started to set in but then suddenly something or nothing will trigger an absolute panic attack.

Went into my bedroom just now and on top of the pile of newspapers next to my bed is a magazine I hadn't read and on the cover it said it included a portfolio of photographs of sixties icons, so flicking through I was suddenly jolted by an article about three young women whose lost partners had done the Wootton Bassett procession. I was consumed by tears and terror. It was car-crash reading. I wanted to both read and look away. It felt insulting to ignore their honesty and grief but being a coward I just couldn't face it.

Sandhurst is an extraordinary place. Imbued with history in every brick it is both beautiful and terrifying. Apparently C did extremely well to be accepted at 19 and without a degree, but being his mother it just didn't feel like that. The day we dropped him off was unforgetable. His father and half his goods plus friends in one car and me with the other half in mine, we made the thirty-five mile journey in convoy down the M3 and then gathered in Tesco's car park spotting fellow travellers.

It wasn't hard to pick them out because the Army being the Army insisted that all cadets bring their own ironing board, so amongst the fleet of four-wheel drives and German estate cars (and my little old hatch-back) the three defining factors in picking out the new-guys were; a pale face taught with anxiety; clothes resembling a country squire or dame in the nineteen-thirties and a huge, brand new ironing board. The ironing boards were very pleased to meet each other and cheerful banter soon developed.

We were security checked, and as always I was singled out for the full search and then finally we drove around the beautiful grounds to park on the awesome parade square in front of Old College. As the father and I walked up the parade steps he said to me 'you can't help but feel the weight of history bearing down', and for the first time in a long time we were in complete agreement.

Many pleasant passtimes occurred in the twelve months he was there, will definitely never forget the polo and strawberries and champagne.

But perhaps the best was the Mess Dinner where my friend and I dressed up in glamourous gowns and were escorted through the gilded corridors to a beautiful candlelight dinner with all the cadets. The fact that we were the last to arrive, and as C put it 'people have come from Australia - you've come thirty miles, so how come you're late' (two women, make-up-applying and map reading), did not affect the evening at all. I shall never forget the twenty minute presentation by the Coldstream Guard's Drums complete with flourescent sticks (low ceilinged dining room, very loud), or our 'billet' which consisted of delapidated 1970's portacabins, or marching to Church the next morning with the other parents controlled by a very small, shrill, Scottish Sergeant Major. It was one of the most bizarrely wonderful events I have ever attended.

Anyway, on his father's fiftieth birthday, and in freezing cold weather, his family and step-family gathered to celebrate his passing-out parade. My son is now a Second Lieutenant in the Rifles'.

Speak soon. A soldier's Mum x