Remembrance Day, Driving Test.

Keeping the blog up to date and filling in the gaps between the two weeks at Deepcut there was a weekend at Cramlington, basically just a few command tasks to carry out and a quite intense bit of circuit training on the Saturday, Sunday was the Remembrance day parade, this was my first parade, it was great to get in amongst the veterans and to hear their stories etc, before the parade there was a short church service, the church was packed and it was standing room only, it was great to see young and old come together for this special day, it in a way restored my faith in humanity just a little, with all the problems our country has at the moment, with feral youth, anti-social idiots and criminal low life everywhere i look, this day showed that not all is lost in our society and there is hope for the future.

The parade went well, we stopped at the war memorial, trying to stand dead still when you are absolutely freezing is quite a challenge, i could feel myself shaking, it was a very cold November morning. After the parade it was back to the unit HQ for drinks etc.

Not long after the remembrance day parade i found myself at Grantham on a driving course, this was a week long course all payed for by the army, unfortunately i failed the final test, i hate to make excuses but it didn't help that my instructor was deaf in one ear and was very impatient. I failed on the most simple thing which i thought was very harsh.

Altho i failed i cant complain, i had a week away driving, i enjoyed it, and i got payed for it. The driving instructors are civilian but the examiners are military, if you join and pass out as a TA soldier and you cant drive then phone your units HQ and ask for driving courses.

While there i shared a room with four other lads, three were TA and the other was a regular soldier, one thing you`ll notice is that when you go away and meet other TA/Regular lads or lasses you always get on very well very quickly. The Regular lad brought along his xbox 360 with a copy of Call of Duty Black Op`s which kept us amused for a while, also a large collection of DVD`s. All the lads were also there on driving courses, some HGV and others forklift.