What could have been.

This week I was thinking of when I joined the Army. It’s scary just how long ago that was, more years ago than some have been alive, but I remember those days as if they were just yesterday.

Having said that, don’t ask me what happened last week, I can’t remember!

Isn’t it strange, how the stuff that happened days ago can be forgotten, but things from years ago you remember as if it happened ‘an hour ago’

I can remember where I was, and what I was doing when Argentina invaded the Falklands, I was home in leave and happily confident my unit would be called on to go help ‘kick ’em out’ (very disappointed we weren’t called on, they told us Northern Ireland was just as important)

We were in the ‘coal yard’ as I was helping Dad get ready for the week ahead, and we got to discussing the news that Argentina had taken the Falkland Islands.

Dad didn’t think we’d go and take them back, I’m not sure now whether it was he really didn’t think we had the courage, or the fact that he’d seen what war was like and really didn’t want to wish that on anyone.

As for me, I was ready to go in an instant, I’d trained for it for years, and finally here was a chance to show England that it was money well spent.

To hear the news reports about the event you’d think that the Islands were just off the coast of Scotland, not seven thousand miles away in the South Atlantic.

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I can remember all those things, but ask me what happened week and I’d be totally lost, no idea what you’d be talking about.

The reason I’m thinking of this is this week a schoolmate put a post on Facebook of a soldier on exercise in winter, with the caption of some of the colourful words us ‘Squaddies’ used to use in describing the weather. His comment was something like, “Never went to Norway, but remember the cold on exercise”

My reply was “Three flaming months in the Arctic, IN WINTER”

But you know something, I ask myself “What if just one of those things went differently?”

What if I’d never joined the Army? or if we’d gone to the Falklands instead of Ireland? How would life have worked out differently?

These aren’t morbid questions filled with fear, but the very questions that any writer asks, and usually a darned good story is born!

Those are just a couple of the hundreds of decisions made over the years that have led us to be here right now, what if we’d changed just one of them, would it change who we are?

You know, that’s the fun of writing stories, you can ask those questions and invent your own answers, or maybe you change the one decision you wish you’d made and work out where it might take you

Or as one famous character once said, “It’s a funny thing, going on an adventure, you never know where your feet will take you!”

That’s enough for this week, but I’d really love to hear the events that shaped your lives, and how do you think it might have gone if a few of those were different?

Let me know what you think.