SO after last week’s shoot ‘em up debacle where I got it in the ear for mistakenly buying a dodgy game.

This week I’m writing about being dodgy in a shoot ‘em up game where I literally got it in the ear.

There are probably worst requests you can hear from your 13 year-old son but asking whether he can have a paintball party for his birthday has to come pretty close.

Now I may have mentioned before that I am very much built for comfort and not for speed. Well, I would like to add to that when it comes to shooting anything, I’m a lover not a fighter.

That said, paintballing and I have a bit of history.

In fact one of the greatest moments of my short time spent living and working in London was dressed in a camouflage boiler suit clambering in and out of windows on the former Greenham Common Airforce Base.

I had gone along with a group of colleagues from work, one of whom was a bit of a paintball expert and so had all the kit, and I mean all of the kit.

We were all placed in different teams and for most of the day he pretty much wiped the floor with the rest of us until the very last game.

Detirmined to get my own back I steathily made my way through one of the blocks trying to find my friend until I tip-toed up some stairs and discovered him picking people off from a window.

Now it would have been very easy to shoot him in the back there and then but where’s the fun in that, so I gently creeped behind him within touching distance before shouting at the top of my voice ‘Surrender’.

I have seen anyone jump so high in all my life and I’ve never laughed so much either.

Like I said, a lover not a fighter, and so it was at the weekend when I took the Big Boy and three of his friends to a paintball site near where we live.

Obviously as excited as any boy might be with a gun that shoots paintballs out at 200mph, when it came to the actual game itself the reality of being hit started to take hold.

Rather than charging into battle the Big Boy and his friends cautiously hid behind various barriers poking their heads out and firing every now again - as did I.

Finally it came down to the last game and with a bucket load of paintballs to dish out, we were all resolute to go out all guns blazing.

Except the game meant someone dashing to the frontline and stashing an armed bomb on a helicopter and as it was the Big Boy’s birthday it was him and me tasked with the job.

And that’s when he wobbled a little bit.

Since I mistakenly got the shoot ‘em up game he’s been a little too grown-up for my liking but at that precise moment with a little panicky tear in his eye, he was my lovely gorgeous little man again.

‘Do we have to do it dad, I really don’t want to’ he pleaded but he and I knew we did.

And so we did. We charged at the helicopter together and of course got obliterated by paintballs in the process.

Later we counted with pride the number of bruises and I’m pleased to say I won ten to eight.

NEIL D’ARCY-JONES

Weekend Window “Thanks Rose for everything you do for Katie - you’re the best,” Lynne and Tony