$£%&@!**$%@&.....Brains!!! @£$!%&*£@$&!£@%$&*.......BRAAAAAAAAAIIIIIINNNNNNNNSSSSSSSS!!

We lost a lot of good men today, they may have turned in to flesh eating zombies but they served our team well.

Today was D-day! The morning that Seth had been going on about all week. Excalibur martial arts (seth's Tae Kwon Do class) had organised a Nerf war to celebrate their sons birthday and it seems to be an annual event with these guys. To prepare ourselves for the big day I had brought myself and Seth new weapons as Seth found reloading our other guns difficult due to his muscle condition. I got the guns that could hold the most bullets thinking that would mean less reloading but when they arrived and Seth realised he couldn't load them on his own we had a week of stress and anxiety. Concerned that he would be open to attack it was obviously playing on his mind a lot especially at bedtime (when is he going to understand that best friends stick together and I'll always be his wing man).

They had a nice easy lesson today so that students could conserve their energy for Saturdays main event and as the older children and adults classes follow his we had a couple of hours to kill. Seth has been asking for weeks if he could go on the Bridgnorth cliff railway and our extra time loitering round Bridgnorth made it the perfect filler. We had Seth's friends from school William and Matthew and their dad Steve with us for company which made it more fun. Before going on the cliff railway though we walked along the city walls and admired the one remaining wall of the castle. Seth spotted a cobweb on the railings and with a very serious face asked if it was a medieval spiderweb? Genius!

After our mini adventure and cliff rail ride we headed back to base to prepare for battle. The leisure centre hall had been transformed into a battle zone with cardboard box barricades everywhere you looked and a camouflage netting covered maze in the centre, a role playing delight for all the kids (and us eager big kids). Mrs M had kindly filled my bag with face paint so quickly got the boys ready for their imminent scrap.

Seths taekwondo teacher had come up with an elaborate storyline and from just looking at his get up you could tell that he was really in to it. As he bellowed out commands us grown ups chuckled at he rear, the problem was us old timers at the back with our intermittent hearing had no idea what he was saying, so oblivious to any role playing that had been set we took the unclear directions and translated them in to something us dads could understand 'if its under 5 feet tall shoot at it'. The kids were darting about at crazy speed and for the first time I was really feeling my age. It seems that (although I had never seen them before) a couple of the kids had taken an instant disliking to me and were hell bent on unloading ALL of their ammo on me. (On the drive home Seth informed me that its because I have a villainous beard).

Everyone was having a whale of a time and I was most impressed by the 6 year old sniper that managed to shoot me in the jugular, quite the marksman. Seth and William were joined at the hip and whenever Seth managed to sneak up on me he managed to get me on the face which was closely followed by a second bullet from William. I seemed to spend most of my time picking up darts and reloading until a young lady called Emily started bringing me handfuls of ammo she had found, what a little angel. (sadly i didn't get a photo of her).

The final battle was understood by the grown ups clearly, as the children built one large barricade to hide behind us big kids were a pack of zombies coming to storm the trench. The children shot at us to try and fend us off and i lost both arms in the process but managed to get to the wall. As the zombies were tearing at the walls the children (especially the ones that had run out of ammo) were screaming excitably, it was a lot of fun.

It was two hours of mayhem and not eating since early that morning was taking its toll and i was getting very tired. So as everyone flattened the boxes for recycling we made a hasty get away (sorry guys). We definitely look forward to doing that again next time.

Thanks Excalibur and Happy Nerfday Reilly