Yesterday was the day I went paintballing for the first time in my life. Yeah, more like PAINballing… I was fortunate enough to be invited along by Richard and some of the other people who work at Wilkinsons in Cwmbran (woot.. 
).
The day started off with having to wake up at 7am. Christ. I didn’t even know there was a 7am. Needless to say, staying up until 3am the night before wasn’t the best idea. Paintballing on 4 hours sleep is what I would deem close to suicide… lol.
So anyway, we made a stop off in Newport to pick up Bean. I’m surprised the mini buss still had wheels by the time we left. To be honest, one of the highlights of the day was to seen Bean running across Caerleon roundabout, like a madman, with his thinning hair flopping in the breeze and Truman in close persuit. Classic.
This place was in the middle of nowhere. We had to trek across acres of land, over mountains, across seas… Yeah I went too far, didn’t I? But it was a fair walk from the carpark to the place itself.
One of the other highlights, in my opinion, was when I picked up a small set of overalls to wear. How would I know they wouldn’t fit? I’m small, why shouldn’t they fit? It was a sight to see me packed into childs overalls. If only someone took a photo 
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After being given the whole talk about not taking your goggles off or risk getting blinded, etc, etc, etc, we went off to play our first game. IT was called Speedball. Basically you’re put in a field with several baracades made from barrels and told to shoot the shit out of each other for 10 minutes or until one man is left standing. Mayhem. The barrels are stacked so that there are relatively small holes between the barrels, which you can see through. I was looking through one of these holes, and got shot in the eye! I shat myself. These paintballs fly at approximately 120mph and I got shot in the eye. It was that point that I was actually appreciative of the headgear we were told to wear. Unable to see for the rest of the match, I was shot out pretty quickly. I got shot in the forarm first time.
I’ll tell you this now. The first time you get hit with a paintball is something different, you can’t brace yourself for it, because you don’t know when it’s coming, and you can’t compare it with anything you’ve felt before - that is unless you’ve been hit with something other than a paintball at 120mph sometime in the past. It broke the skin slightly, leaving a purple graze.
We were instructed at the beginning of the day, several times in the space of a few short minutes, that we were NOT allowed to remove our headgear in any way, shape or form, unless we are back at basecamp. We’re not even allowed to remove it in the deadzone (the place you go once you’re out of a game). We were told that the penalty for removing your headgear would be expulsion from the rest of the days games. Well, I don’t know why, but while I was in the deadzone, some guy removed his headgear. After the marshal had just drilled it int our heads. All it took was a quick (and I mean fast) mobile phonecall, and the manager guy game over within about a minute, and the guy was taken back to basecamp. Never saw him again. I bet they incinerated him.
So as the day went on, we played various styles of game. I think my favourite was Castle. The scenario was a basic attack / defend, where the defenders have to prevent the attackers from rasining the flag in the castle. Being part of the defenders was the best bit. Hiding behind baracades, making a break for it to get little closer while under heavy fire. It was one of the most exhilerating things I’ve ever done. I managed to get to a baracade that was rather close to the castle. While there, I took out somewhere around 5 of the opposing team. I shot one of them in the ass, through a window, from ground level, while he was up on the second level of the castle, from behind a baracade. We later agreed that it was Richard that I shot in the ass! Score! I also managed to get shot in the face 3 times during that round. It’s a good thing headshots don’t count. Although I couldn’t see very well, and one of the paintballs hit me in the mouth guard, spraying paint into my mouth. Not nice.
Throughout the day I was shot multiple times in multiple places, but none of them were especially good shots. What I mean by that is that none of them left any good bruises to show anyone. The worst one I got was on my left shoulder, it looked pretty good last night. But it’s faded slightly since then, and if I took a photo it probably wouldn’t show.
I ended up running out of paintballs in the last round and had to sit out. I think it was for the best really, since in the last round, half of the blue team decided they didn’t want to be sore losers and joined us on the red team, leaving the blue team with a huge disadvantage. Not to mention the switchers were a bunch of loud, moronic drones with Welsh chavvy accents who couldn’t fire a paintball gun to save their lives. Seriously, one guy broke his gun. Explain to me how you break a lump of solid metal without launching it at a wall at high velocity? Damn apes.
Somehow we lost the key to our locker somewhere along the line. We had to ask the person the kiosk if they could open it for us, and they had conveniently misplaced the “master key”. By master key I think they meant the gorrilla with a hammer. So we asked the manager guy, and he said he’d help us out, that it wasn’t a problem. He then proceeded to talk to everyone in base camp and shake their hand. It wasn’t until almost everyone had gone, that he told some dolt in a florescent jacked to open the locker. Which he did - using bruteforce and a screwdriver. We could have done that. And it wouldn’t have taken the half an hour it took for the guy to stop piss arsing around and do it!
Well anyway, I got home and fell asleep at around 10:30pm - which, for me, is early. I didn’t wake up until 2pm the next day. It was then I discovered that I was immobilised. As the title says - my everything aches. I’ll attribute this aching not to paintball wounds, but to the fact that yesterday was probably the most excersise I’ve done in 19 years…
