I heard a funny story at lunch. We have a chap in the office that is in the Territorial Army. Apparently he commands some type of unit. He is about five years younger than me, so a little young to be leading men into battle, but he went to Cambridge and he’s a thoroughly good egg, so I’m sure he is more than capable of leading a bunch of part time soldiers. They’d probably have put him in charge of Burma back in the days of the Raj.

This chap was in charge of some kind of night operation. He had devised the scenario and had placed himself on the only road running through the field of operation. He wasn’t taking part; he was making sure that none of his men got run over. Essentially deploying himself as an armed lollipop lady for grown men. Apparently this was necessary as his boys were wearing camouflage gear and therefore might not be seen by oncoming cars. I did point out to him that his men are likely to face greater threats than oncoming Ford Mondeos when they are deployed in a war zone, he took the more pragmatic view that they wouldn’t be much use in a war zone if Kev from Essex had already struck a blow for the Taliban and killed them with the lowered grill of his supped up Astra.

While our man was standing in the middle of this quiet country lane in his high-vis vest he realised that this particular quiet country lane was a lot busier than he had anticipated and curiouser-still most of the cars seemed to be pulling into a small car park near by. Ever alert to the unexpected, our young soldier decided to investigate. Off came the reflective vest, as per the first page of the British Army’s secret reconnaissance manual, this boy had done his home work. He approached the car park in stealth mode until he found himself a suitable bush for an intelligence gathering exercise.

You’ll have worked out by now that the car park in question was a dogging car park. Somewhere members of the public drive their car to have sex in public, or to have sex with strangers, mix and match etc. The kind of car park in which you don’t dare fart, because if you wind down the window you’ll get a cock stuck through it. I know these people like to be watched, so the more the merrier, but how many of the exhibitionists there that night expected there to be a young officer in the bushes; wearing combat fatigues; face painted with war paint; watching the whole scene unfurl through the Night Vision sights that are sat on top of the barrel of his SA80 assault rifle!