Holy Flying Paintballs!

"Don't shoot! Don't shoot! Friendly, friendly!"

Those were the words being screamed at me last night as I was busy unloading gas propelled paint pellets into someone's face and back before realising they were on my side.

Paintball: an interesting team building exercise for the staff at my cinema. Actually it was more like releasing a pack of wild hounds and letting them vent their frustrations with high powered guns for three hours. When you're the boss you're a prime target for people to shoot at, and I can tell you something, paintball pellets hurt when you get shot at point blank range. I'm not sure when the bruises will go down, but the field marshall assured me they will go down...eventually.

After being shot in the face, arms, back of the head, legs, balls, knees, feet, arse, side, hands, elbows, chin and stomach several times in the first two minutes, I decided to play it smart. I went and hid in a building.

After that I didn't get shot quite so much and I found out after it was over that my injuries were nothing compared to some of the others! My Chief Projectionist got shot in the back of his head at point blank range by one of my Cinema Managers who was on his side at the time. She didn't mean to do it, she had just accidentally shot another projectionist - who was also on her side - in the leg when her hand slipped. She apologised, turned the gun away and her finger slipped on the trigger again just as the gun was centimetres away from my Chief's head. Fortunately he was okay, but he did have trouble walking for the rest of the evening. To be fair my Cinema Manager had been shot in the mouth several minutes earlier and was still spitting up paint, so she was understandably jittery.

Paintball - good team building.