My Military Conversion

I called my boyfriend yesterday morning. 'I Hate You' I said, as he answered with his incredibly cheery, (and very annoying) 'hello darling!'. 'I really, really, really hate you'. He laughed. 'Well I'm not making you do it - go on - stay in bed, watch telly all day, it's fine. I don't mind,' 'Now I really REALLY hate you' I said, and put down the phone. I walked over to the window. Yep - still the same. Pouring rain, howling winds. Bank holiday monday, perfect for curling up in bed with Sex and The City, but instead I was being made to go outside and walk in the rain with a bunch of marine reservists and their supportive girlfriends. Ugh.

However, I knew it meant a lot to Soldier Boy that I go with him, and it was too late to back out now. Sighing, I got myself ready and waited to be picked up. Soldier Boy jumped out the car with a huge military waterproof, listened to me complain for ten minutes while he pulled and prodded, and fitted the jacket to me. I surveyed myself in the mirror, and almost sort of liked the way I looked in uniform.

'You do know that I look like a massive lesbian, don't you?' I said. Soldier Boy just laughed. Actually, that's how reacts to most of my moods which is even more annying than him getting annoyed with them.

So anyway. We set off to the New Forest. Soldier Boy and his friend had plotted the route on an ordinance survey map, and were improving their map-reading skills by following the bearing - or something. There were eight of us in the group, with two 'navigators'. We started walking through the forest - and yes, it was still pouring with rain. Luckily, the wind had stopped howling and my government-issue waterproof was doing its job - unlike the sods who issue it. But my combats weren't doing so well. As we clambered through kneee-high shrubbery, I got more and more soaked from the waist down, but concentrated on keeping my feet dry.

Then we came to what was marked on the map as a 'stream'. Obviously with the overnight rain, this little stream was now a raging torrent. Without a bridge, there was no way of crossing it without getting soaked - so we had to walk up along the stream and cross where it was possible. Which meant that we lost our bearing and our place on the map. We eventually found a big log and clambered across it, but now we had to find out where we were.

And so we continued. But now, in addition to the pouring rain, we had to stop, for what seemed like every five minutes, and watch while Navigator 1 and Navigator 2 examined the map, pointed their compass around, walked one direction, then stopped, looked at the mao, walked another direction, and so on. Every time Navigator 1 decided on a direction, Navigator 2 called him back, ummed and arred, checked the points, argued the toss and then proceeded in the same direction. I was getting more and more grumpy, and wet, and Solider Boy had noticed. 'Morale low? he asked. 'It's the rain, isn't it?' I glowered at him.
'No, it's not the rain, Solider Boy. Stopping every five minutes and examining that fucking map for half an hour - that's what's making my 'morale' low.'

To top it all off, as we started making track to the pub, we came across what can only be described as a swamp. Disguised as a grassy patch, I step right in it. 'Squelch'. So there go my feet, wet as can be, for the next two hours of the trail.

But it did get better. It stopped raining for one, we reached the pub where I changed into dry socks and trousers, and we started finding our way a bit better as well. The sun even came out.

Not that I enjoyed it, mind you.

Food For Thought

I've been looking into different kinds of social networking recently, Twitter being my latest fad, and it's started me thinking about what all these networks actually mean for us as a society. Looking back on the Facebook trend that, for me, started about 18 months ago, it was a novelty. MySpace came before it, but didn't have quite the same impact that Facebook has had. I remember being a little creeped out by the fact that I could stalk everyone's activities - who they spoke to, where they'd been, what they'd been doing, and how they were feeling at the particular moment in time - if they chose to share it with the world, that is.

Now Facebook has become a way of life - well for my generation at least. We plan parties on it, we entertain ourselves at work on it, share photos and basically let it run our lives. It has proved to be a very useful tool for my close group of friends to keep in contact with each other despite the fact that two of us are in different countries at the moment. In a way, it feels like they've never gone.

While, when you think about it, it is a bit weird to be so closely connected with each other's lives - knowing who's doing what, and more importantly, who's doing who, it's not actually all that different from society a few decades ago. We used to live our lives quite openly - people would drop round for cups of tea, women would gossip openly about their neighbours, and there was a real sense of community in neighbourhoods and schools. I don't think you can say that this is true today - we hide behind our front doors and drawn curtains and in our cars, and it's not a rarity to know nothing about your neighbours. In this new society, we choose to interact in other ways - instead of face to face, we sit in front of screens and show a virtual picture of our lives. We're selective about who we interact with, but we're as open as ever... go figure....