02.06.2003 - 11:02 a.m.

Most companies have little rituals amongst their inhabitants and ours is no different, so this time, for this person, their leaving ritual is Paintball ( she's left twice so far )

I've not done this before but I have some military experience so was quite looking forward to it, it was held on a derelict and overgrown RAF base and had a suitably raw feel to it ( all scaffold / corrugated steel / broken bunkers etc ) Once in two teams we set out playing short games of 5 mins or so to get in the mood, this worked and we all got into the mood ( although it was a hot day and the mood was mostly sweaty and out of breath ) I found quite quickly that being hit by a paintball from a reasonable distance ( i.e. 30ft ) doesn't hurt, saying that though I caught one on the visor which sprayed through the breathy holes over my mouth and nose which wasn't pleasant, so the imapct marks on my body were confined to mild reddening.

The last game was held on a smallish circular field flanked by woodland, in the field were hay bales of various sizes, for the first 2mins it was team against team, after that it was a free-for-all. I'm pretty sure that I was the only one on my team with a full hopper of balls ( what me? with a full magazine, in the last game, with myyy reputation ? ) so the whistle goes and I dive behind a bale and stay there while everyone else expends their ammunition, as the second whistle goes I stood up, maybe not the brightest thing to do in a confined space with 23 other people but I did, I then, oblivious to incoming fire started to bear down on likely targets firing repeatedly ( think of Arnie in Terminator 1 in the police station, you'll get the picture ) at this point having more ammunition than any one else worked well, and in most cases I ended up 5 or 10ft away from someone trading shots and when they ran out of balls I moved away and found someone else ( not before shooting them in the head though ) I was the last man in the field which gave me a perverse feeling of satisfaction and a beautiful collection of impact welts, which we all traded in the pub afterwards( not physically traded you understand as we're not surgeons ) I dismissed the Rambo tag as Rambo was a bit soft, Arnie as a robot was much more suitable ( and his english is better )

The final count was - 23 impacts of which 3 are serious and I took 3 or 4 to the visor as well, strangely enough the bruises don't hurt, even when poked ( since going to press I have been awarded "Best Visible Bruise" by the organiser). But when I tried to get out of bed this morning I was reminded the wisdom of limbering up before exercise ( alright then, charging through the woods like a fool ) as my Rectus Femoris ( leg muscle ) was stiff and mostly inflexible which makes stairs interesting in a 'hold onto the bannister tight and pull youself up/down the stairs' kinda way and also ( but strangely less so ) the cycle to work.

The next event is already being planned for september, this time I know what to do, I'm hoping it'll be cooler so I can wear something thicker under the coveralls and lower the impact count, but I may not because sometimes you just have to go the whole hog and hurl yourself with abandon into the moment ( I'm also the kind of person who after kayaking on lakes in the welsh mountains, jumps in, deliberately, just for the experience of jumping into a very cold lake )

This proves that my life is probably too boring.