Did you enjoy high school?
Loathed it! In fairness I did make it harder on myself than it needed to be: I was a very angry kid, quick to flare up and resolutely opposed to giving anyone (including myself) an inch of slack. Misery loves company, so of course I joined the
Army Cadets and spent five years terrorising anyone unfortunate enough to be put under my command. I joke, but "
toxic masculinity" doesn't even begin to cover what I had in those teenage days.
We’ll talk about that in a bit! Why were you so angry, you think?
I'm not sure. Maybe it was something to do with being the youngest, or being picked on, maybe I wasn't really any angrier than any other teenager and just went into environments that drew it out, like cadets.
Did you want to kill people? Were you interested in the army because of politics?
There's so much more to a soldier's job than killing people, so truth be told I didn't really think about that bit too much during the phase when I thought I might join up, I was focused on the adventure and the challenge and the camaraderie aspects. Same with politics; at that stage I didn't think about it much.