Test me.

Come on.

Test me.

Not with your report on my desk by Monday morning. Not with your meaningless appraisals and having to pander to offices full of broken people. Not with your Estate Agents and Bank Managers. Not with failed relationships and break ups or overcrowded trains and traffic jams - the daily defeat of modern life.

I need a real test.

I need a real test because for the last few years my dreams have been full of them. Maybe I've seen too much; even from the comfort of my living room. Maybe I'm suffering a televisual traumatic stress disorder. Whatever it is it knocks on my door during that half-awake, half-asleep period in the morning, sipping from the last dregs of sleep. The test begins in two minutes...

In two minutes I will be transported onto a busy tube. It is morning and we rattle around the carriage like zombies. There is a flash of light and the carriage is engulfed in flames. But not me. Not me because this is a test. The survivors describe a figure untouched by flame, a figure so calm and composed while he led them to safety.

Four minutes till the next test. I shift uncomfortably in my bed.

The giant clock at London Waterloo shows a quarter to ten. I'm running late but I never run. This is a test after all. I only notice the light and the rush of air and suddenly the glass roof is cascading down, a deadly crystal waterfall. I can save you all I whisper.

Awake. Awake now. The test is over.

I am hiding behind a stone wall and my legs have failed me completely. Or rather my mouse has. My mouse hand twitches left and right and then settles. I'm struck by the noise of warfare. Pounding. Mechanical. Relentless. This could be a good way to die. So I make a run for it. Blind. Tired. Sick of the noise. And I'm running and a thought spirals into my brain, whistling through the air, a bullet delivered from a sniper. How many just didn't fancy it anymore? How many displays of valour were delivered by men sick of the test?

I'm no good at these games. I get nauseous real quick. The rotating. The looking up and down but I carry on moving. I carry on hunting because there is nothing more to do. I storm around the hollow shell of what was once somebody's house and come face to face with the enemy. I'm out of bullets and his weapon appears to jam. Is this the test now? We could have walked away. Did this ever happen? Did they shake hands and refuse to kill when nobody else was looking? It's too late to think. The hunter spins the mouse wheel and dispatches the prey. Somebody's son rots in the rubble of somebody's house.

I've only ever heard the term 'generation envy' once, during the D-Day landing celebrations a few years back. I thought it was nonsense to start with. War, war is stupid and people are stupid. Having your insides torn apart by barbed wire and shrapnel is nothing to be envious of. Leaping from an aeroplane, aged 17, on your first parachute jump only to be hacked down in a spray of bullets - it is not something to be envious of.

In the game I rush across some farmer's field. A cow lies dead. The noise embraces us again. Mortar shells erupt all around us. I pass this last wicked, evil test. I move left while my Sargeant moves right. He's gone in an instant, the rag doll physics put through their paces.

Does every man think meanly of himself for not having been a soldier and am I to live in this perpetual state of readiness forever?

I admit it. I envy you. I scan their eyes on the television set during the latest anniversary celebration. The few that are left, they puff out their chests and still march with defiance. They passed their test.

October 2005

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