About last week

It fell to me in my capacity as best man to organise some form of stag night. Me being me limited my options somewhat, but in the end, and with Nicky's consent, I decided to organise a round or three of paintball.

It all got off to a rather shaky start, when it turned out that of the 10 people I'd expected to turn up, 5 had to pull out at the last minute. I fretted about that some, as I'm want to do when I find my meticulously laid plans disintegrating around me. I'd feared the low numbers would spoil the atmosphere, but thankfully everything seemed to work out in the end. It's true that the resulting games may not have be ranked amongst the most frenetic rounds of paintball ever played, but we made up for it with copious amounts of sneakiness allowed by the near deserted surroundings. Our low numbers also gave us an advantage in that we didn't fire as many of the extortionately expensive pellets as we might have otherwise.

This was the first time any of us had played paintball, and whilst we'd all heard tales told of how painful the sport could be, we still found ourselves unprepared. We'd been informed before the game started that the paintball pellets travelled at approximately 300 feet per second, and once the game started I think we were all taken by surprised by just how much 300 feet per second hurts. And that's a lot. For the most part I escaped rather lightly next to some - we compared welts and bruises at the end of the night, in what I presumed to be some form of male bonding ritual. I think Nicky was worst off, but that may be because in the last two games he was alone defending himself against the rest of us - the peril of of being a groom at one of these events. Naturally we showed him the requisite amount of mercy - none. That's not to say I got away scot free myself, although my worst wound turned out be self inflicted when I managed to shoot myself in the foot - in my defense it's surprisingly easily done, and it wasn't an attempt to exempt myself from the proceedings. Remember when I said these things are painful? Well, that's only from a distance. Up close, and even through a pair of shoes, they are extraordinarily painful. I spent a goodly while hobbling around after that. I take a little pride in the fact that one of the organisers told me that was the first he'd heard of anyone shooting themselves in the foot - it's nice to be first at something.

A good time was had by all in the end, and everyone agreed they'd happily return, albeit with perhaps a shade more padding next time. The night continued on beyond the paintball, as a couple of the Nicky's friends who'd failed to make it earlier turned up and decided that a more traditional stag night was in order. All I'll say about the remainder of the evening is: It wasn't my fault; they made me go along with it; and I've never stared so intently at a wall in my life. And that's all I have to say about that.