JOINING the ‘normal’ People
by Sgt Alex Ford
t is a truism that military life is a cosseted environment. Unless you want to, in fact, your whole life can be spent behind the wire.
House. Shop. School. Mess. Education Centre. Dentist, Doctor. Gym. Everything you could possibly ever need... on tap. Leaving you in a nice safe, warm, fuzzy environment with like-minded people who share a job, an employer and a lifestyle. But one day that has to end…
Like death and taxes, it’s a certainty that one day you will cease to be in the military. And when you leave it, you literally leave it behind and have to head out into the real world...on your own.
You have to find your own house, a job, a doctor...everything as ‘normal people’ have to do, but you have to do it all at the same time. For a group of people who have had their whole life easily mapped and provided for them, this is a really difficult thing to do.
Take, for instance, getting a house. We have a small deposit that would just about make 10% of the purchase price. Because we are both leaving the forces, we will have a much larger amount of cash available in the future. But these funds don’t come through until about a month after you have left. Meaning that it makes sense NOT to try and fight for a mortgage, that a lender probably wouldn’t give to us based on our initially meagre, but survivable on, pensions (early departure payment) from the Service that similarly start a month after our discharge, but instead to wait until we have a huge deposit and then apply for a smaller mortgage.
20 Envoy Winter 2012
But this leaves the problem of where to live. Our entitlement to a house runs out three months after our
discharge...meaning that yeah, we could wait in the married quarter for the cash, but then be really up against it to find a house and have the purchase go through in time before we are quite literally made homeless.
So we have made up our minds to rent for six months or so, just to tide us over whilst we relocate to our preferred area and then have a base to buy the house we want with a bit more leisure and leeway.
But this is a bit of a nightmare itself. To rent anywhere decent you really need to be employed, rather than ‘between jobs’ but to get a job you really need to have a base for those jobs, and yet to get a base for the jobs you need to be employed.
A vicious circle that has led to a lot of phone calls to and from agents, and some...well not actual lies...or even real untruths... just extensions of the truth. Like saying that although we are relocating, I will continue to be paid by the MoD until next year (true...I will be on my terminal leave until my discharge date and my last pay day).
This all just adds to the stress. The future is uncertain enough, but when you have nothing
certain...no home, no work, an income of a third of what you previously
had...it is just too much. Each one of the most stressful things that can happen in your
life...all come together at the same time. It means that tempers fray. Patience runs short. You wake up at night not knowing if you ARE going to have somewhere to live...or
what you are actually going to do for work.
And this makes you tired. It makes you more testy and tetchy and you argue over little things and you can’t enjoy
anything...and you stress and stress and stress. And everything is just so difficult you feel like running away and hiding, even though you know you can’t.
Pause… fast forward…
I sat in the car today and worked it out. Eight times in six years. I have moved block, room, Mess and house eight times in the last six years. At one stage I had three different ‘homes’ – a shared house in Abingdon, my wife’s house in Pirbright and a room in the block at Ludgershall. I had stuff everywhere. Kit, phone chargers, stereos, clothes, trainers, shoes all over the
shop...all over the south of England for Goodnessakes!
And now here I am. Almost a civilian, with exactly two months until I am out of the RAF and fending for myself in the real world. But finally I am in the bedroom of my last house. We ain’t moving again! Here in the wilds of darkest Shropshire we are making it our home. The place where we intend to stay forever. A small village, with a fairly decent sized semi- detached Edwardian house overlooking the local churchyard. The bell tower chimes the quarter hours. It’s lovely. It’s quiet, it’s calm, it is where we will make our home.
Home…
It was once ‘wherever I laid my hat’. But I grew tired of that. Yes this place is five times
www.raf-ff.org.uk
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