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enthusiast of any kind you will right now be saying, ‘Hang on. The US equivalent of Regimental Sergeant Major is Command Sergeant Major. This guy doesn’t know jack about squat.’ While that may be technically correct, I hasten to add that I am talking about the portrayal of certain ranks in cinema, not the actual military equivalent. If you find this footnote hasn’t satisfied your grievance, you may consider writing to the publisher or perhaps just giving up on this particular book altogether. That said, please don’t do either of those things. Just shrug your shoulders, say, ‘Oh well’ and carry on with the book. I promise to keep all military parlance to a minimum for the duration. I also apologise on behalf of the bookstore where you purchased this volume in the unlikely event that it was mistakenly shelved in the military history section.

3
    A Shot Heard Around
the Restaurant
    T here is still conjecture as to how this war began. Some say Dad was the initial aggressor; others are adamant he was merely returning fire in defence of himself and his family. Yet others believe it all began when my father assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand.
    What I know for sure is this: Like many of the world’s great conflicts, the beginnings were both complicated and simple; different sides have different versions of events and history will most likely remember it as it is first written down. With that in mind, I will recount events as best as my subjective memory will allow.
    It was 1986. Picture, if you will, a boom time, where markets were high and spirits higher. Boy George had just made a cameo appearance on The A-Team and, quite understandably, anything seemed possible. The French and English governments announced they would tunnel under the Channel, the Russians launched the formidable Mir space station and the children of the world gathered en masse to be disappointed by Halley’s Comet. These were heady times.
    But, despite the epoch of progress in which they found themselves, the group of friends gathered for a barbecue at the house of Richard and Cheryl Opie had no idea they would witness the start of something that would never be forgotten. This barbecue would come to mark the beginning of an obsession that would consume the lives of many, and inconvenience the lives of so many more. Ten years from this moment people would look back and say, ‘What the hell just happened?’
    The social barbecue circuit of the mid-eighties was a phenomenon amongst my parents’ friends, and a wonder to behold. Men had the choice of a Crownie or a Swan Lager and any woman not drinking chardonnay was drinking a chardonnay-based wine cooler, recently promoted by a cheeky advert featuring a young woman in a convertible, sporting impressive breasts barely reined in by a Ken Done bikini.
    These gatherings had a special energy to them. Everyone there was old enough to not be young, yet young enough to not be old. In essence, this was probably the last time they could have young hair. Or at the very least the last time they could have young hair without it being just a little sad. Their children had grown up to such a point that they no longer needed constant supervision and could be left to their own devices. Parents who had spent the better part of a decade of parties checking on bassinettes and cutting food up into little pieces were finally free to get together and have grown-up adult fun.
    Now don’t get me wrong. By grown-up adult fun, I don’t mean that these were swingers’ barbecues. That is not the ‘special energy’ I’m talking about.
    The barbecue in question was playing out largely as planned. The parents were talking and laughing in the backyard while the kids had absolute run of the house and were having a ball. Well, all the kids except me. I was the only boy. All the other families had two girls. Whilst there was always the option of going off with my sister,