(-A-)

Loaded with information and questions, polished shoes, smart black trousers, slim fit shirt for the more butch approach and off i popped to the army careers office .... Last friday


When you get there you have to push a button for either Army, Navy or RAF and they let you into the waiting room where (surprisingly enough :) you wait for a recruiter from that background to come and talk to you. The room is basically rammed full of endless information, posters, magazines, leaflets, desk on the right corner, a model of a howitzer (mobile artillery gun) in the left corner just for the added touch. BUT theres a tv mounted on the wall in the middle that plays on loop a 1:00 long clip, like you'd find on the jobs website, just shows all the exciting bits, i'll get to that later, anyways


Now a guy came in, and asked "oh has anyone come down yet?" so i assumed he ment to come and talk to me so said no, said hey and shook his hand ... then there was an awkward pause ... yeah he wasn't the recruiter just another guy like me. fail but his name was jake and turns out he used to be an armourer but left for civi street and was back re enlisting so i basically quizzed him over the hour and a half it took for someone to come down on every aspect of it and found out loads.

Things like, posting preferences, i can choose 3 options anywhere the army is based (most popular being cyprus) or give an area for instance England, oxfordshire, oxford and they will try and get you posted as close as possible
What i'll be trained on, basically all standard equipment, to which i can go on to do specialist courses on the 50 cal machine gun and grenade launcher to go out with the mechanized infantry etc

now imagin seeing and hearing that tv clip just over 90 times. its enough to drive a man to kill something so i guess in a way its effective.

So yeah he came down in the end, hes called andy. hes a sergent but more importantly hes welsh. i really did try and take him seriously but the accent is amazing but hes my recruiter now through the process, basically asked me a few basic questions and what i wanted to do etc, he was going to have a go at trying to explain the course etc and what would happen next but was impressed i already knew all the details and in's and outs (think it saved him a job tbh)
he gave me another version of the online form to fill out, should of taken 20 mins but took 40 as i was eves dropping on the conversation behind me jake was having with another recruiter about what jobs are available, ... it's pretty bleak news really, most of the army is fully manned besides certain pinch's but the infantry is always hiring, i was tempted to ask more but the thought of family/friends disownment which got rid of that thought quickly. This just means ive been warned that the intake to my course after the assessments could take up to 8 months. yeah huge bad times this is miles off what i once thought
but its far more relaxed than i imagined it to be, the recruiter behind me came across and sat down at the table with me and had a chat for sort of 20 minutes about things, just not what i expected

Given more in depth forms to fill out at home, to which i need my doctors details, then i'll ring and book the barb test. done the forms over the weekend i'm just waiting till Thursday for the doctors as i can tie it in with having the lump on my face removed

so yeah, should be sitting that sometime next week, good times.