Could you resist? No, I couldnt either…

Ms. Megliemoo got wind of it first, a friend who was involved or something… It sounded like a lot of fun. We thought about it and I thought of quite a few people we could invite, she suggested we should start our own rebel team...!

I get dissapointed with myself sometimes. I mean, Ive managed to conquer the mother in me to a large extent, but with things like this i automatically go into “Oh no, we couldnt do that!” mode and become ultra conservative. Things like “But we might get in trouble!” or “They might not like it if we do that!” start coming out of my mouth, and in my head im thinking ‘I shouldnt break the rules.’ and ‘What if things go wrong?’. Im working on it, trust me. The best teacher is experience.

Fortunately for everyone who came, Ms. Megliemoo has a wickedly cheeky devil in her that instantly squished any such objections from me (and was possibly egged on by them i suspect!), Ms. T and the Ashman have amazing organisational and resource locating skills, and totally unexpectedly (tho I should have known, she has the inside track on many things), Ms. Pixie came through with the intelligence we needed on the other teams (and we forgive her for playing both sides: thats what spies do, ne!).

And so, the rebels without a cause were born. We had just one email to base our actions on, and no time during the week to prepare. The two teams of 12 people were planning to run around the park and destroy each other’s paper flags. The team who destroyed all their opponent’s flags first was the winner. We were just there running interference and attacking either team indiscriminately.

In we went! We got our warpaint and silly hats on and then spent a frantic half hour filling up our water weapons and soaking ourselves in the process. We set up a base camp, sent a couple of our boys out on recon missions, then dashed headlong into the fray. They had some damn good weapons. Where exactly do you buy water guns that shoot big sprays of water? Mine shot just a thin stream, and if you have ever been in the position of me throwing something at you, then you would know that I am the most hopeless of shots, so my water bombs soaked many an ankle but did little damage beyond that. But I definitely got soaked.

Well, I was out of amo, so I headed back to basecamp with a few others, decided it was time for a ciggie break, sat back to watch the action. It was well past midnight, just slightly misty and I could see far off figures running through the trees, hear squeals and shouts break out here and there as two groups met up, or as another flag was destroyed. It was quite surreal, and lovely and cool standing around in wet (work) clothes on a warm night, lovely to have bouts of running in the dark thru the trees, lovely to sneak around in the shadows to try to catch someone unawares.

The police came on their rounds, checked our gaijin cards, chatted with us a bit, seemed surprised that we were all from different countries, warned us about the homeless crazies and told us to have fun. Actually, my favourite conversation for the evening went along these lines:

Ms. T (in a hard, wary voice): Police up ahead.
Three police dudes on bikes with big flashing red batons approach.
Meg: Yep, we’ll just have a bit of a friendly chat, it wont be a problem.
Ms. T (still pretty hard): Yeah....
Meg: So you should probably lower your gun then…
Ms. T (looks at her left hand which holds a large machine gun type water pistol, pointing up; promptly lowers it): Oh, yeah… good idea!

Eventually, the last flag was destroyed, a cheer went up and the two teams joined forces to soak we poor rebels (again… and I was just on the verge of being dry!). We hung out for a while afterwards, finishing off the alcohol we had brought, enjoying the cool air and each other’s company...and then it was 3am and time to go.

And you wonder why I love this city… or maybe not.

(Ms. Megliemoo has amusing transcripts of the emails that flew around at that time, from the one we accidentally got at the beginning to the last skymail we sent the organiser at 5pm on the day of the fight.)

• arumanda said on 05/09/13 at 02:42 AM.....

  that’s just such a fabulous little entry.  i am envious of your frivolous fun and wildly cheeky spirit. 

  
  wonderful

• Natalie D. said on 05/09/13 at 09:52 AM.....

  It sounds dreamy, unreal, too good to be true.  If anyone wonders why you like your city then they have not an ounce of joy in them.