“Pashto? You want to learn Pashto?” I looked at my 11-year-old son in astonishment. He has just sat his 11-plus exam but even if he gets in to the local selective day school, Pashto is not on the curriculum. Pashto is the senior of the two state languages of Afghanistan, article 20 of whose constitution states that the Afghan National Anthem “shall be in Pashto”. So why does Cost Centre #3 suddenly want to learn a language that he has never heard spoken before? Because he believes that Britain will still be sending troops to Afghanistan by the time he is old enough to serve his country – and he wants to be ready.

The school CC#3 hopes to attend may not teach Pashto, but it does run a combined cadet force that he could join in the year he turns 14. Maybe that experience will be enough to dissuade him from his plans to serve. If he goes to university and joins the army as an officer, he will not be eligible for deployment until 2020. Of course, he could well have changed his mind by then anyway. But he has been focused on an army career for at least two years and far be it from me to influence his decision.

Meanwhile, what to do with a young boy who is keen to drive a tank when he grows up? For a start, I have taken him to the Household Cavalry Museum, on London's Whitehall, so that he can learn about the two regiments that make up the Household Cavalry, the Life Guards and the Blues & Royals. The Household Cavalry is divided into two units; one is the Household Cavalry Mounted Regiment, which performs mounted ceremonial duties, such as escorting the Queen's birthday parade. The other, the Household Cavalry Regiment, serves in armoured fighting vehicles, and is currently in Afghanistan. Those of you who have seen the men in their impeccable uniforms, mounted on their equally impeccable horses, forming The Queen's Life Guard in Whitehall, might reflect that those same men are probably only recently returned from the theatre of war.