These Are A Few Of My (Least) Favourite Things......

Having finished all of the class room work and 'practiced' until we were bored stupid we 'deployed' to sunny Scotland to prove that we were all competent signallers. At the time Northern Ireland was apparently too dangerous to exercise there.

I've yet to understand the army's love affair with the more remote parts of Scotland. I present the evidence:

• They are excessively hilly.
• The population tends to consist of no people and billions of midges.
• They resemble no other country in the world (apart from maybe bits of Wales - the bits the army owns).
• The bits the army owns tend to be as far away as possible from anywhere interesting.
  
• Did I mention the hills and the midges.

Having deployed to a hilly, midge infested, remote part of Scotland miles from anywhere we proceeded to "cam up" our vehicles. Now this is the bit I really hate.

A cam net is like a large green string vest covered with plastic leaves intended to make a LandRover look like an innocent bump in the ground. What it does tend to do is make a LandRover look like a LandRover pretending to be an innocent bump in the ground. Putting a cam net up is a bit like wrestling several balls of string at once. Whoever designed the cam net seemed to forget that army uniforms are covered in buttons and the cam net takes every available opportunity to grab hold of one of the many buttons. Many is the time I have wrestled the cam net and lost.

Eventually we cammed up the vehicle and then the fun really began............