I got shot!

I've been to a family reunion this weekend. We have one every two years. It features 80 descendants of my great-grandfather, and it tends to take place at slightly bizarre spots in the countryside. This year it was a hotel in Gillingham. If you're not familiar with Gillingham, it's one of the Medway towns in Kent. If you google it, you can't find much about anything except for the football team. I don't want to say that that's because Gillingham has nothing else going for it... so instead I'll just leave that idea hanging in the air while I look at my laptop with a raised eyebrow.

We took Milo (my nephew) out in his pram yesterday, walking grimly along the side of the motorway until we found a little park. Actually it wasn't so much a park as a field of dog turds and syringes, but let's not quibble. On the way back to the hotel we were just bellowing small talk at each other over the noise of the traffic when a car came past very fast and I felt myself being hit hard in the thigh by a small missile, which ricocheted into Milo's pram. I gasped and clutched my leg, and when I took my hand away, both dress and palm were covered in orange liquid.

"Oh my god!" said my sister dramatically, recoiling as we stared at each other, horrified.

"It's not blood," I pointed out, a bit unnecessarily. I lifted my dress to see orange all over my leg, and there was already a little bruise forming.

Pulling myself together, I retrieved the object from Milo's pram, and discovered it was a little plastic pellet.

Yes, dear reader: someone had leant out of the window of a moving car and shot me with a paintball gun.

I'll be honest - I wasn't really hurt, or phased, although it was a bit irritating. But if it had hit Milo, or my mother, I would have been beyond furious.

Riding high on the drama of my ordeal, I headed back to the hotel to wash my dress and mope about in my room, staring at my bruise in the mirror and wishing it was a bit worse. But no sooner had I got the orange paint off my hands than I started to hear a weird singing/shrieking noise.

At first I thought it was kids messing about outside. But no. These were repeated, operatic wails. It was only when this was joined by a second noise - the sound of bed springs creaking enthusiastically - that I realised that it was coming from whoever was in the room next door, and that they were having one hell of a Saturday afternoon in there. To make things worse, the wall was so thin that I actually had to double-check that they weren't in my room, perhaps having sex in the cupboard containing the ironing board, the coffee sachets and some UHT milk.

This scenario was disturbing enough, but as they embarked on the second round of moaning and panting mere inches away from my head, something even worse dawned on me. What if the noise was coming from some unidentified relative of mine? I jammed my fingers in my ears and went back to looking sadly at my leg.

On the plus side, when I headed down for dinner I had become a sort of war hero. People came up to me looking anxious and hugged me, telling me how disgusted they were that I'd been shot. "It's assault!" they said, outraged, and then, "How are you?" in concerned tones.

"Oh, I'll be alright," I said, in my bravest whispery voice. "It's just a little bruise." Truth is, it's a miniscule bruise. I'm just thankful it was under my clothes otherwise I would have had to beef it up with purple eye shadow.

To lighten the mood, I told a few people about the shagathon next door. They loved it. My cousins told me it was probably my parents. I said I reckoned I'd heard their parents' voices. Hilarity ensued. When I came down for breakfast this morning I was greeted by a cheerful "How's the mega-bonkers?!" from my own father.

Thankfully I never found out who it was. That's two crimes committed against me this weekend, and neither of the culprits were caught. My uncle had a bad time too - he got up for a wee at 5am and discovered 20 wasps having a party in his bathroom. I blame Gillingham. Really and truly, it's all Gillingham's fault.