At my younger sister's wedding, my mother mocked my dress uniform in front of 200 guests and called me a "lowly soldier

Seven days.

There was a process. It took five months. I was removed from the working group on the twenty-first of October, which was correct and which took about four minutes.

I was not disciplined in the end. I was spoken to, formally, in writing, by a colonel who had known me since 2019 and who was extremely fair and who said one sentence I have thought about since.

She said: "You didn't misuse it, Tamsin. You carried it into a room where you were angry."

I came off a promotion board in the March. Not as a sanction — nobody said that and I am not claiming it. It simply did not happen this year and it would have.

That is what the four seconds cost, and I would like to say I have made my peace with it.

And the thirteenth of October, which is the date that actually matters and which nobody in my family has ever asked me about.