Team: Kieren Smith

It's a few weeks ago now, but I'm very pleased to share with you that I got married early in the New Year!

For those curious, the "knife" being licked by Julia was one of our wedding presents, a handforged foot long dirk used to cut the cake!

The wedding ceremony took place in the old Birkenhead Town Hall, now called the "Wirral Museum" (originally opened in 1887 as the town hall, and now hosting a small museum for the history of the local area). The marriage service took place in the beautiful and impressive council chambers on the top floor of the building, beneath the stained glass windows in the roof!

To the surprise of everyone (including me), Julia opened the ceremony with her beautiful voice, singing an old Irish love song (My Lagan Love). The service all went well and I only had to be asked to put my axe down once, which amused most present!

After the ceremony we decamped to Hoylake Sailing Club, also founded in 1887 and situated on the promenade, so we had a beautiful view of the sunset across the beach and across to North Wales, while enjoying a veritable banquet of food!

Halo 2 might seem like a bit of an odd choice, since it's quite an old game, but it's held its age well I feel and is great fun with groups of friends. I had the opportunity to visit a friend's house for one of their semi-irregular fragfests, where we connect as many consoles together as we can and then proceed to blow the living snot out of each other in games like Halo 2...so I've spent the week practicing my "skills".

I say "skills" in quotes here, because we don't exactly play normal matches here, we usually prefer to do crazy things like rocket launchers only on tiny maps, and last weekend was no exception. This time we went just one step further, and everyone donned a blindfold to play.

3 minutes later the match was over, and one guy had killed himself 5 times (he never made it out of the first room), one person had managed a kill, and most of us had blown ourselves up at least once. Oh, I forgot to mention that one person wasn't blindfolded. They were our camera person, wandering around the map trying not to get killed and recording the mayhem, so we all had a good laugh watching it later.

It seems UK children's TV has much to answer for, as the old program Knightmare became our inspiration for the next match. Teaming up in pairs, the one with the controller was blindfolded, and the second person would guide them. Sounds easy doesn't it? Well, it's not, but the results were hilarious as people tried to guide their blind companion with their Needler towards the enemy (for reference, the "Needler" is a fun little homing weapon in the game, not very powerful unless you can hit with a lot of shots).

With a game like this it's all just for fun, so we weren't picking out winners or anything. However, if you're interested in some statistics:

• Blindfolded with Rockets: I killed myself about 3 times, one person actually managed a kill, another person never made it out of their tiny starting room alive
• Blindfolded in pairs (me being guided): My "team" came third with 1 kill, the highest had 3 (I think)
• Blindfolded in pairs (me guiding): My "team" came first with a monstrous 4 kills, and were seconds away from the fifth and final kill when the timer ran out.

Expect more blindfolded game antics in the future...Blindcaliber 2 anyone?