Hen weekend

****Please skip the first few paragraphs of this if you are offended by words for ladies' rude bits. Thanks.

"I'm always saying cunt, I just forget about it," said Laura. "Cunt this and cunt that. There's nothing quite the same in Spanish. Coño just isn't the same."

"It's true," I chipped in. "you get little old ladies saying that on the news here. It's not the same as cunt – it's just so horrible."

"Twat is good though," said Karate. "Twat is well funny."

"Minge is the best," said Kate. "But it's best when a Spanish person says it. I taught it to Ignacio and he won't stop saying it. Meenge, meenge meenge."

We all laughed at that. And there we were. One native Spanish speaker and three English girls discussing the different words for a woman's nether regions. We also threw snatch into the mix then pondered why, when they all mean the same thing, do they all have different levels of offensiveness?

Frankly, it wasn't really what I was expecting in terms of your typical conversation at a hen party.

But then what had I been expecting, from the conversation and the whole weekend in general? Dildos on heads? Male strippers and whipped cream? Not really – I know the bride, Jane, well enough to discern that – thankfully – that's not her bag. Good: I rate that kind of thing as about as much fun as chewing nettles with a mouth ulcer.

Until this one I'd never been to a hen party before. By the time close friends started getting hitched I'd up sticks and left England.

Living in Spain means it's just not financially viable to go back to England for the wedding and the hen, so the hen gets forfeited.

But this one was in Barcelona, so it was rude not to. Plus rather than a trawling bars and clubs and drinking yourself into oblivion this was a weekend in a lovely sounding casa rural in the mountains near Vic – and it involved paintball, something I've always wanted to do.

So while the stags headed to Madrid where they'd be doing their best to traumatise the poor groom Jim, I took the AVE to Barcelona and we set off in the car for the country house.

Just as we got out of the city the heavens opened and the sky turned black. Once we got to the mountains it was beginning to feel more like Evil Dead with each passing second, and the icing on the cake was the Tom Tom trying to get us to take the road to the local cemetery instead of the road to the house.

Finally we turned onto the right dirt track and after a kilometre of steep, near heart-attack inducing hairpin turns we were there. God knows how Jane managed to drive us up without having a panic attack.

We were in for the night. All that was left was to get to know the other hens and not too pissed and not go to bed too late as to fuck up paintballing for the next day.

There's always that slight bit of anticipation when you go into a situation where you don't know everyone. It's that kind of first day at university feeling – what if no-one talks to me, what if they're all annoying or worse still, boring? But there was no need to worry – everyone was lovely, we all got on amazingly, and before we knew it, it was 2.00am and time to drag ourselves away from the karaoke and to bed. The alarm was set for 8.30am so we could get up and do some killing.

It wasn't too bad to get out of bed the next day. And I felt a damned side better after I got a call from bloke at about 9am telling me the stags had just left our house. It sounded like carnage. They'd drank about 50 beers in the first hour, dressed Jim up in his special outfit – a lovely golden catsuit, wrestling mask and dog collar – and toured the tapas bars in Barrio de las Letras.

In one place he decadent lads had shelled out for half a kilo of percebes, but spoiled the air of sophistication by one of them accidentally pouring a pint of beer over some poor girl's head.

On his travels Jim even bumped into another English guy dressed like him – no mean feat when your material of choice if gold lame. He was stuck with it though, after loosing his clothes along the way somewhere. They'd ended up back at ours and had trashed our flat while drinking till we were getting up for paintball. Bloke later told me it took three hours to clean up (onlot for them to come back the next night and trash it again.

No matter - However bad I felt getting up at 8.30am after six hours sleep, I couldn't feel as bad as them, I reasoned.

Paintball was definitely the high point of the weekend. Such an adrenaline rush, making a dash for the flag you had to get back to your own base. I was physically shaking while crouching behind the various trees and bits of wood they put there for cover.

I always knew I was a bit wrong in the head, but there was something really satisfying about shooting someone in the other team – hearing them scream when the’bullet’ made contact. Anyone who's done it and tells you it hurts isn't lying. As well as a good number of body hits I took one in the neck, which bruised up to look like a hickey. Brilliant. That's what you get for doing kamikaze runs towards enemy lines. I can still taste the paint in my mouth now.

After a few games some of the hens dropped out, leaving the hardcore of me, Kate, Chris, and Karate to join up with a stag party, who were swigging beer as they went. The poor groom – he got covered in beer, then at the end we were all invited to just shoot him at point blank range to use up the rest of our ammunition. Best he had some shiners the next day.

Why is it that the main point of a stag seems to be to inflict as much pain and embarrassment on the groom as possible? Does he deserve it for leaving his bachelor days behind? I definitely think they get the bum deal.

Our hen was lovely, and it was so well organised. Kate had it booked up months in advance. Lovely Anna did all the cooking (for 15 people!) and it only cost us 12 euro a head. And equally lovely Nicola packed a hire car with booze and drove it up to the house. And that only cost us 19 euro – plus we went home with two bottles of wine each.

The boys bless them didn't seem to know what they were doing almost up to the point that they went out. At one point they ended up walking round mala saña for 45 minutes trying to find a suitable bar they all liked. Not a problem for most, apart from poor Jim, who was wearing a dress with no front, heels, a string of pearls, and not much else.

Even though they’re probably having the week from hell right now, I'm sure if you asked them they would say they had more fun than us. And we, of course, would say the same.

Because that’s the point of it all in the end – fun, whatever that is to you. It could be gunning down your mates in cold blood and ending up black and blue. It could be doing Queen power ballads on the karaoke. It could be drinking till you fall over or dressing your best mate up to look like the world’s worst tranny.

It doesn’t matter – it’ll all make great stories for the speeches at the wedding, whatever it is.