Martin

You know you're institutionalised when: 1. All of your food has to be prepared by a chef because you're incapable ofcooking anything that can't either be boiled in a bag or eaten cold 2. You don't trust your mum/wife/girlfriend/any woman to iron your kit because deep down you think that your ironing is better 3. You wouldn't dream of polishing a pair of shoes or boots with just onebrush. There has to be a separate 'on' and 'off' brush 4. You always use the 24 hour clock. 5. You point using your whole hand in a karate chop motion 6. Your civvy mates don't understand any of the terminology you use such as 'nodramas', 'squared away', 'take a knee' etc. 7. You don't have any civvy mates 8. You think that anyone who isn't in the Army has 'Stinking chat' 9. People in prison have more contact with women than you do. 10. You never use anyone's first name, only their surname or surname basednickname such as 'Smithy', 'Jonesy' or 'Browny' 11. You are incorrectly under the impression that you can get away with showing 'moral courage' in everyday life, without getting the sh*t kicked out of you by some neanderthal for interfering in his domestic 12. You secretly quite like 'cutting about' in uniform in places you really shouldn't 13. You use the phrase 'cutting about' 14. You come out in a cold sweat if you find yourself still working after lunch on a friday 15. You can't watch programmes such as 'Ultimate Force' without giving a running commentary along the lines of "He didn't forward assist" or "Look at the state of Ross Kemp's webbing" 16. You wouldn't dream of using Kiwi liquid polish 17. You have to stop work at 10am for tea and cakes or else you might not make it to lunch 18. You find that the conversation somehow always comes back round to you, because you're more interesting than most topics of conversation 19. You think not shaving is a treat 20. You get really irritated when people you don't know call you 'mate' 21. At least half of your DVD collection are war movies 22. Even though your disposable income is twice that of a civvy you still manage to spend it all, every month, with nothing to show for it, about a week after you've told all your soldiers that you 'can't believe how much money they waste on the piss' 23. You now hate corned beef hash, in any form 24. Whenever you spell something out you use the phonetic alphabet 25. Nothing soldiers do shocks you any more 26. The sight of rolling countryside makes you scan for 'enemy depth' 27. You dismiss anyone who might be better than you at something by stating that they're 'Sh*t with weight on' 28. You think that eating every meal for a week with the same spoon that you licked clean and kept in the pocket of the same shirt you've worn all week is perfectly normal 29. You don't understand why your civvy mates won't go out on the piss mid-week,because apparently where they work it's 'not the done thing' to turn upsh*t-faced at midday 30. You have flashbacks of being wet, cold and miserable whenever you see a Yorkie 31. You lie when people ask you what you do for a living