My Son's in Afghanistan: Making Designer Sofas Out of Sandbags

Another snatched satphone conversation with her son in Afghanistan for our resident soldier's mum Mandy

The sun did not shine this week. Not a moment has passed when thoughts of the families, friends and comrades of those five soldiers from 2 Para weren’t clouding my head. The guilt that I feel reflects their pain, because today it is them…

Life just fell apart. Laura left home. Tom couldn’t face school. Beenie decamped to her and Ross’s room. She had spoken to two of the soldiers on her Facebook site. And for a while I lost my footing. To Daniel, the beautiful busker who sat with me for a while in Parliament Square on Sunday night, I just want to thank you. Your words meant a lot. Sometimes, it’s all too easy to lose sight of what you have.

And then, so unexpectantly, Ross phoned me.

“Alright trouble? …only got five minutes…..I’m still up in the mountains mum. No worries. We’ve made designer sofas out of sand bags, got us some sun shades too. Bit too slow putting them up though, one of the lads has been carted off back to base, suffering from heat-stroke…bloody weakling!”

I can’t believe he is talking to me and I'm too emotional to speak, so I just sit and listen.

“…ponchos mum... strung out all strategic like… I’ll put some up in the garden when I get home if you like…gonna be catching some lost prisoners later…”

He has this way of trying to make light of everything. Like when he fell off the kitchen roof right in front of my eyes and then denied it! He shouldn’t have been up there either. I tell him to keep his helmet well down and shoot to kill. It was so good to hear his stupid laugh.

It is impossible for me to think that our troops should be withdrawn. Not now. Or what has it all been for? We’re digging deep with everything we have for Ross’s R+R in a few weeks. Others, I know, feel the same about their sons. How we will let them go back is another matter. Mother love could break legs. It isn’t easy.

More of our troops are being sent out. But it’s not enough is it? Hapless Nato does not work well. If it did, maybe more countries would be engaging and not registering their intent to leave if rebuilding conditions aren’t met. Our boys meanwhile just get on with the job.

And George Bush sips his tea and stuffs his face with muffins in No.10, playfully back- slapping Gordon Brown. This arrogance disturbs me greatly and I can’t help but compare it with the solemnity of the five Union Jack draped coffins awaiting their repatriation. The only time I have ever protested was the day that Ross flew out to Afghanistan. For me, it is the 15th March, all over again.

Sunday’s Protest began as peaceful as it gets. Of course, if you ban a march, you will antagonise a few people, myself included. I am not an activist but democracy has to be fought for. The phenomenal police presence was nothing short of an expensive schoolboy error. Lines of police flanked by hoards of kitted-up, baton-wielding riot squad, and behind them, the mounted police, and then the riot vans. All for 2,500 Guardian readers? (Well, I know what I mean!)

Or, as the nice policeman told me, “We take the threat of a terrorist attack near to Downing Street very seriously.”  Don’t make me laugh. He was in there already.

The photographs you see on this post are of the five British paratroopers killed in Afghanistan in the week beginning 8 June 2008, (from the top) Pte Nathan 'Cuthy' Cuthbertson, aged 19; Pte Daniel 'Dan' Gamble, aged 22; Pte Charles David 'Dave' Murray, also aged 19; L/Cpl James 'Jay' Bateman, aged 29; and  Pte Jeff 'Doc' Doherty, aged just 20. He had celebrated his birthday two days earlier. All from 2 PARA. Motto: Utrinque Paratus - 'Ready for Anything'