Foxtrot, Uniform, Charlie, Kilo - Blue Leader 2...out.

The first paintball whistled past my face and the second splattered against the tree trunk I was cowering behind. I'm 194 cm tall and I was a large, slow moving target trying to hide behind a couple of twigs and assorted low-lying shrubbery. Unfortunately, no amount of green, brown and beige camoflage cloth was going to hide my incompetence.

I couldn't even crouch down properly, because every time I bent over, my ill-fitting overalls would perform a wedgy on me. Anyway, younger, fitter and testosterone-charged individuals were on the frontline, while Ben and I volunteered to fight a rear-guard action - we stood out like.......well, we stood out like two middle-aged fathers accompanying their kids to an afternoon paintball session. We were highly prized targets!

This was my first ever paintball session, so it's not surprising that I was a little apprehensive about getting getting hit by a pellet travelling at 300 mph. Regardless of my trepidation, I had already signed a disclaimer, squeezed into a pair of camoflage overalls (2 and a half sizes too small for me) and loaded my semi-automatic machine gun. I was determined to make the most of it. However, no one was going to take a very large Praying Mantis on Cerapax, wearing a gay looking set of fatigues and fogged up googles seriously....I was going to have to earn some respect.

As I gingerly picked my way through the undergrowth in search of the battlefront, I glanced to my right and a dwarf scurried by (it's true). I enviously looked at his perfectly fitted uniform - how the hell did they kit him out so well when I ended up looking like the lost member of the Village People!

Six minutes into the first round, I'd fired off a dozen paintballs and had been shot in the arm by an unseen sniper. By round two I was rolling through mud puddles and encountering the enemy in close quarters. Half way through round three I'd been hit so many times that my overalls were beginning to look like a Monet - Battlefield at Dusk. The green, brown and beige patterns were now contrasted by bright red, blue and yellow splodges of paint.

Dad's Army wasn't faring very well. Ben raised his hands in surrender, but a couple of kids took this gesture as a sign of aggression and pumped a couple of paintballs into his back from close range. The battle was briefly interupted by a yelp, a couple of expletives and the repeated phrase 'you little tossers'.

Two hours and forty three minutes into our campaign Ben and I charged the enemy base....well, Ben walked at reasonable pace (the dwarf ran a decoy to the left and I cleverly drew enemy fire with my head). As I pranced about the forest like a back-up singer in a Madonna music video, Ben calmy strolled into the middle of the enemy base - incredibly a hail of pellets somehow missed him and he was able to exact his revenge by firing off an entire magazine into everyone under 15 years of age and 5 foot in height - while muttering 'little tossers' under his breath.