Today Everything Changes: Quick Read Read Free Page B

of cigarettesmoke made the back of my throat sting. I used to hate it, maybe that was why I’d never smoked.
    We were allowed just three sheets of hard toilet paper at a time. There was a sign on the back of each toilet door to remind us: ‘Three sheets only: one up, one down, one shine.’ At least it was better than where I’d come from. On top of that, there was the luxury of hot water, plenty of it, and we were ordered to use it. Sometimes we had to shower three times a day, after PT in the morning, after further training in the afternoon and before lights out at night.
    I never got tired of hot showers. At night I used to take a plastic chair in with me and sit under the hot water for as long as I could. It made me feel like a millionaire.

Chapter Ten
    Every day started at six-thirty, when the duty sergeant would burst in, turn the lights on and shout, ‘On with your socks, feet on the floor.’ Everybody had to be standing on their bedside mat by the time he’d walked around the room.
    I was in C Company, which included my regiment, the Green Jackets, the Light Infantry and all the Scottish regiments. The Scots’ training sergeants always had a bagpiper in tow to wake not only us up but all the rest of the battalion.
    As soon as we were up, it was a mad panic. There was a lot to do before we were inspected at eight o’clock. We had to wash, shave and get dressed. Then we went to breakfast. This was the only meal we didn’t have to march to and from. Instead we ran. Everyone had to have breakfast. It was called the Queen’s Parade. If you flaked out on the assault course or on the drill square later and it was found out you hadn’t had breakfast, you were in the shit, big-time.
    To me, breakfast was yet more luxury. Thecookhouse always smelled of baked beans and toast, but at breakfast time there were eggs and bacon, too. You could have as much food as you liked but you had to eat everything you put on your plate. It was only a few months ago that breakfast was a can of Coke and a Mars bar for breakfast. Sometimes I would go mad and have a Flake instead.
    We had to get the food down our necks fast because we had to race back upstairs to clean and dust the toilets, washrooms and bedrooms. They all had to look like new. The floors had to be swept, then waxed and polished to a brilliant shine every day. We soon found a work-around. We agreed to use only half of the toilets, so we’d only have to get to grips with the other half. The out-of-bounds bit would only need a quick dust.
    There was a mad frenzy to make sure that everything, even the taps, was clean and dry, and the mirrors had to sparkle. The rooms reeked of disinfectant or floor wax. You could have eaten your dinner off those floors.
    The worst part for me was making my bed. I had to strip off the sheets and the three blankets, fold two of the blankets and the sheets so they were exactly the same size as the pillow slip. Then fold the third blanket, wrap it round the rest of the bedding and place the parcel atthe head of the bed where my pillows would normally be. Then flatten the pillows, because they had to be all nice and smooth as they lay on top of the bedding parcel.
    As we were doing our beds, we would hear shouts from one of the senior lads. They lived on the floor above us. Many of them were from the Scottish regiments. ‘Area cleaning! Get outside for area cleaning.’ Come rain, snow or shine, everyone was called out and lined up about the camp. Then we moved in one big sweep, like policemen looking for a murder weapon as we cleaned our company areas.
    Of course, we were in the UK so the grass was always wet, no matter what time of year it was. That meant our boots were always damp and muddy. We had to wipe them with the cloth we kept in a pocket before we went back inside. The last man in would polish away the marks that our rubber soles made on the freshly cleaned floors.
    Apart from Glaswegian grunts that the standard of today’s area