Greetings all, and a very happy 2016 to you all. I hope you all had a very merry Christmas filled with champagne, vast quantities of chocolate and loved ones aplenty.
You will have also had to contend with the bizarre period between Christmas and New Year’s Day when you lose track of what day it is, but you think it might be Sunday, and the best thing to do with your time is watch The Sound Of Music (Julie Andrews film version please, not ITV’s recent live attempt) and consume your weight in Cadbury’s Roses. It’s a Chrimbo limbo in which time at once manages to stand still and fly past at a rate of knots so before you know it you’re having to sweep away the hazelnut whirl wrappers and drag your sorry carcass onto the 6.58 to Paddington wondering why trousers with an elasticated waistband are not deemed acceptable office attire.
Well this year I have been extra lucky because I have gone straight from Chrimbo limbo to deployment limbo. Which has the same sense of foreboding as it approaches the end, but it’s less acceptable to sit in your pyjamas filling your face with strawberry creams. It should be acceptable, but I’m afraid it’s not.
Deployment limbo is that awkward few days when you’ve said farewell to your loved one – and no one will judge you if that’s involved holding onto his ankle crying “don’t leave me” – but he hasn’t actually left the country yet. His phone hasn’t gone into storage, but you can’t see him, and it feels a bit weird to get upset over someone who is sitting in a barracks somewhere dicking around on YouTube when they are supposed to be doing Very Important Army Business.
Welcome to deployment limbo. Where people don’t really understand why your bottom lip started quivering at your desk, and only three bags of Maoam pinballs can stop it. Where you want time to go quickly because you want to see him again, but at the same time you need it to slow right down because better that he’s sat in a barracks watching Arnold Swarzenegger YouTube in this country rather than in a camp somewhere else.
All you can do is hope that by the time deployment actually starts you never want to see a Maoam pinball again, and you’re ready to start on the “I’m going to spend deployment getting super fit and healthy AND learn French” stage.*
In the meantime, you convince yourself that buying new coats is “retail therapy”, that dry January is an invention of the card companies and start up your blog again.
All the while, you know that things are about to get a whole lot trickier.
*This usually doesn’t kick in until the final week of deployment. By which time it’s too late for any of this self improvement nonsense so you eat Maoam pinballs while watching Amelie (with subtitles).
Army WAG 