A Good Day to Dye

The final part of Euan's birthday celebrations today (they know how to drag these birthdays out nowadays), with a day's paintballing out in the wilds of Glasgow-shire with a few of his pals.

This meant a freakishly early start (for a Sunday) to get there for a 9am start, especially after a sleepover with very little of the sleep part. Still, arrived on time, along with the lucozade, Red Bull and milk swigging stag party that had still been partying at 4am and were either chucking up outside the entry hut or cursing whoever's idea it had been to do this in the first place.

After a safety briefing they were straight into a run of 4 or 5 different scenarios. I think it all came as a bit of a shock to them that it wasn't much like playing the PS3 in that it hurt. Lots of painful looking red spots started appearing, mostly on the few exposed areas left but even making a fair impact through the heavy boiler suits they were wearing. The young team held there own against the Big Boys and girls and there was a lot of good banter firing back and forward along with the compressed air guns. If nothing else, our lot have picked up numerous different new applications for sweary words.

The guys running the place kitted me out with a helmet and let me take my camera in a bit nearer to the action for a couple of games, which was good fun. Pretty difficult to use a camera with a full faced perspex mask on though.

A quick lunch, a couple of more games, a few more bruises and we'd worked through the best part of 2,000 pellets. We'd thought the battle weary soldiers would've been knackered and quiet on the road home, but they've done nothing but yap on about it for two hours. I think they had a good time.

Talking of good times, me and my better half are about to jump on a train, heading east to Edinburgh for a kid-free evening and a day's wandering about the city tomorrow. It's one of the few days (only day?) we're off when the kids are still at school, so we're making the best of it.