All Manlified and Stuff

Thursday 3rd December

I've been shot.

Really. I got shot in the leg.

And the other leg.

And the arm, the belly, the shoulder, the foot, the arse, the face, the hands and the back of the head.

And it bloody stings.

I have bruises on my bruises on my bruises and they're now turning all the colours of the rainbow. I didn't know there was even a colour you could get with mixing brown and purple.

Yes, I've been painballing again.

Sorry, paintballing.

Saturday was meant to be spent wallpapering the spare room and turning it into an office, and as these things often happen I got a call on Friday offering me a free ticket to a day paintballing. The only catch was that I had to drive to the venue, the guys with the tickets had no transport and would have to spend hours and hours on trains.

It's good to be mobile at times.

Anyway, if you remember Saturday it was raining in the early morning, and if you were on the moors then you'll remember it was snowing.

This does not bode well for the splatter factor of the paintballs.

In fact, they should redesignate them to be small chunks of brightly coloured icy ball-bearings.

Anyway, there are a few drawbacks to being manly and stuff.

Mostly the drawbacks include being stuck in a cold damp field holding a gun that works one shot in three, wearing a mask you can barely see through and getting shot on the thigh.

If you want to know the top three places that sting on the human body when getting shot with a paintball, they're the thigh, neck and knuckles.

Just in case you're wondering.

So we split into two teams and hit the field and instantly started throwing money away with every shot.

Do you know how much paintballs cost? A bloody lot, that's how much.

I think the most manly portion of the day was when I was hunkered down in a small hut sat on a bomb with a ten-year old boy as my backup and the entire Bolivian army outside the window. There must have been five billion of them out there and we were holding them off just the two of us.

I know there was five billion of them out there from each time I raised my head above the window ledge I could see them all getting nearer and nearer. At least for the microsecond before they all shot at me.

Did you know that there's still gaps in the mask, apparently so that you can breathe.

Did you know that paint doesn't taste very nice?

The least fun part of the day? When the defenders in the home tower see you holding off the entire Bolivian army solo and mistake you for the enemy and shoot you in the back of the head.

It all works out in the end though, since I discovered the sniper responsible wasn't wearing a cup.

A lesson he will remember for all time.