It was the moment that I began to realise what I'd let myself in for. I casually remarked to a wing commander's wife that I might wear a sharp trouser suit to an annual reception and she turned to me with a look of incredulity on her face.

'You don't really expect your husband to get promoted if you wear trousers, do you?' she asked.

The faintest whiff of rebellion was clearly intolerable at RAF Lyneham, the Wiltshire base where my husband had been stationed. A new millennium was about to dawn, but to me it felt as if I had been transported back to the Fifties.
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© unknownWedding bliss: Life as the wife of a serving RAF officer threw up some rather interesting situations for Annie Waller

You might think that life as a military wife is glamorous but, as I very quickly found, it is a small-minded world which is ruled by the RCWs - or 'rank-conscious wives' - and their snobbish armoury of petty humiliations.

It was not what I had expected when I met Paul - now my former husband - almost 20 years ago.

Perhaps I got off on the wrong foot when I first entered RAF society. Then, still in my early 20s and with a slim figure, I attended a fancy dress party in a nurse's outfit without knowing that there would be 50 or so genuine nurses in attendance that night, including the wife of Paul's boss.

The horror at my outfit was palpable the moment I walked in.

I feared that perhaps I had ruined Paul's career. But Paul always said that I was a breath of fresh air and we married in 1997 in a full-blown military ceremony. I left my job in PR to become an RAF wife.

Not that I really accepted the idea. Many of these women saw themselves as extensions of their husbands, whereas I was a gobby girl from Yorkshire, 6ft tall and very loud. I knew I was never going to quite fit in but I hoped that I would still make lifelong friends. Instead I experienced a baptism of fire.
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Cheers: Annie and her husband, centre, at a summer ball with the RCWs - 'rank-conscious wives'

I was amazed to discover, for example, that the houses on the RAF base were segregated according to rank. Each estate - or 'patch', as it is called - was split into areas for airmen, sergeants and officers. And the higher your husband's rank, the bigger your house. Colonels were furnished with five bedrooms and a gated driveway.

Shortly after we married, we moved into a three-bedroom house - as befits a flight lieutenant - complete with standard-issue RAF furniture and garish floral curtains.

I had hoped to make it a home. Instead, I found myself confronted by endless rules.

We were expected to keep our house in pristine condition until we moved out, when it would be subject to a rigorous inspection so that we could be held accountable for any damage.

Paul and I were warned that if we were inheriting a house with lots of nails in the walls, then we must point this out immediately or pay a fine on departure. Of course, our lounge wall looked like an unfinished dot-to-dot picture. We filled in the holes with toothpaste.

Neighbours were known to have been fined £30 for a dusty lampshade.

The same applied for an unkempt lawn or a couple of rogue cobwebs. I longed to paint the walls a different colour but Paul reminded me that we would have to restore them to their original shade of bland magnolia before we left.

Our kitchen cupboards had been painted over so many times that they didn't shut properly.

Then there was the oven. At the end of the posting, we would be expected to take the oven apart and soak it in acid, then rebuild it and polish it until it looked new. I didn't believe it when the other wives first told me but they were serious.

I decided to buy a cheap second-hand oven to save us all that trouble: we took out the original one, wrapped it in Cellophane and stored it in the garage wrapped until we left.

There was actually a handbook telling us how to do everything - including exactly how to strip the oven. The guide also suggested the wives should arrive at cocktail parties five minutes late and at dinners five minutes early.

They should be sure to host regular dinner parties of their own.

I couldn't cook, so I would order takeaway pizza when people came round.

You could see the look of horror on their faces when the delivery boy rang the bell.

Living on an RAF base never felt like home. Everyone was in uniform.

Even the doctor wore military combats. It feels very odd when you're getting a pregnancy scan from a man who looks as if he should be in a war zone. I used to joke that he was dressed as a tree.
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© unknownStruggle: Life as a wife of an RAF serviceman was tough for Annie Waller

Paul served in Iraq and Afghanistan - he flew Hercules C-130J transport planes - and would often be away for months on end. There was always the chance we would have to move away completely and make new friends.

It was hard trying to live a normal life in the face of such impermanency.

We only found out where the men were going next from watching news reports. If Kosovo was on the news, Paul would say matter-of-factly: 'Oh, that's where we'll be going next then.'

But for me, it was my fellow consorts who were truly strange. I'd joke to Paul that I felt as if I was starring in a real-life version of The Stepford Wives.

'I'm Flight Lieutenant Jones's wife,' said the smiling woman who appeared on my doorstep shortly after we moved in. 'Don't you have a name?' I laughed. I was amazed by this woman's apparent eagerness to surrender her identity, yet it was clearly the norm. I would simply introduce myself as Annie.

The snobbery was everywhere.

I remember a friend telling me that she had invited a civilian to join her for a game of squash at the base - but they wouldn't let the woman in until she had supplied a character reference from my friend's husband.

On another occasion, I invited the wives of the squaddies (ordinary ranks) over for a wine-tasting session at my home. It was subsequently made clear to me that mixing with the 'wrong' rank had been a mistake.

The officers' mess was very strict and wouldn't let anyone in unless they were married to an officer or accompanied by one.

While I was there, a female corporal was turned away.

Her response was to marry an officer at a register office nearby and come back the next day with a ring on her finger. They let her in. It was ridiculous.

I remember going to the house of a woman whose husband had recently been made squadron leader. She was sitting at the window dissecting every woman who walked past, saying things like: 'Ooh, look at her, her husband will never make squadron leader!'

The competition among the women was insane - even when it came to gardens.

If a couple on the base had been posted elsewhere, and they had left good plants behind, the other wives would jump over the garden fence and swipe the plants for their own gardens.

Paul and I were determined to try to have as normal a family life as possible in such circumstances. Henry, who is now 11, was born three years after we married, and Kate, who is six, followed a few years later.

When Paul was away, we would keep in touch in strangely mundane ways. He would do ordinary chores on a computer in his tent - such as updating the car insurance or ordering shopping from Tesco - while talking to me on a satellite phone. Paul would be coming under mortar fire in Iraq and I would be saying: 'Don't forget the frozen peas!'

For long periods, there would be no men on the base and the kids would get excited about seeing a postman. Henry would run to the window and shout: 'Look Mummy, a man!'

But it was very hard for them. Kate once climbed into her dad's suitcase so that he could take her with him.

For my part, I dealt with my emotions with humour, and when my children were little I started writing my first book, Married To Albert, which was a fictional novel based on my experiences of military life. 'Albert' was Paul's beloved plane.

Unfortunately, the title of the book turned out be a self-fulfilling prophecy. When I wrote it, I never imagined we'd separate, but over time Paul and I grew apart. Sadly we divorced - although on good terms - a year ago.

I don't miss military life one little bit. There were three of us in that marriage: me, Paul and Albert. And the RAF came first.