Men at Arms

The boy announced this week that he is going to joining the school army cadet force much to my horror. I practice utter respect for the professionalism of our armed forces, but cannot understand why anyone would (potentially) lay their life down for a dusty corner of a godforesaken corner of the globe fighting poeple who will never have the ability to launch attacks with just 40 minutes warning.

Young boys all seem to have a fascination with weapons of any sort and the boy is no different. I've never really known how to deal with this...when he was younger I let him play with cheap and nasty toys of war in the hope that if they broke quickly (which they did) he would lose interest (which he didn't). No doubt his enthusiasm is fuelled by any number of Playstation games that involve death and violence to an unnecessary degree.

Of course, there is a large degree of hypocrisy on my part, as I too was in the Cadets, albeit air focused rather than ground focused. My argument that in those days we were never at war with anyone, doesn't wash with me let alone him. I could simply say no, but that seems equally unreasonable...but any thoughts of a career in her majesty's forces would be severely frowned on. I think I'm over-reacting...after all, most of what they do seems to be little more than an extended outward-bound course...in fact the outdoor skills, the discipline that they teach are pretty useful...and (selfishly) the camps will occasionally give me a nice little break.

So into uniform he will go, hopefully playing nothing more than toy soldiers as boys (and indeed girls) do. But woe be tide if he takes it too seriously.