"Just go f***ing mental!"

And so I get a phone call to go in for the last day of filming, which I'm pleased about. It means I did a good enough job to get the call back, I get to meet up with the good bunch of extras and crew with whom I've got on very well, and it means I don't have to cut the grass...

It's a 10.00am call, and I can't quite work out why but it seems much earlier. The base office is very calm, considering it's the last day, and there is a lot to get through. As with every other day, it starts with gathering around the catering truck drinking tea and chatting amiably, before getting costumed up (the dreadful jogging trousers again!) and make-up. There's about 15 extras today, and we get made up with dust and bruises before heading over to the set, where the crew and some of the main characters are already busy filming. Various combinations of extras are called in, and just before I get a call there is more debate about whether I would have survived being shot earlier in the week, and therefore would be around. In the end I get a different jacket (which makes me look like an east-european drug dealer) and my one scene for the morning sees me helping a line of women and children over some bales of hay in a corridor and then looking worried as I carry on guarding the corridor.

A late lunch is followed by the producer gathering eight of the men together, walking us over to a field and handing us over to two gun experts for weapons training! I, along with most of the others, have never shot a proper gun before, and we get given safety tips before shooting a Baretta hand gun, an M16 rifle and a semi automatic AK47. The guns don't 'kick' as much as you expect, and the blank cartridges really do fly all over the place - like in the movies! The guy instructing me says it's OK to use the guns left-handed, I just have to be more careful of the flying cartridges. Even though the guns are loaded with blanks, the barrels produce a flame-like flash, produced from the compressed gas in the chamber, which would blow a hole in your hand if you were stupid enough to put it over the barrel. It's all a bit scary, but exhilerating all the same and after 20 minutes we're driven over to the set where, three of us get called up and told we're shooting guns. The 1st AD takes the first two and positions them before grabbing me and taking me to the end of a corridor, and along with my designated gun expert, tells me that this is going to be a long shot down the corridor, with lots of stuff going on while I stand at the end firing an AK47 out of the window. The gun expert says that one magazine wouldn't last long enough, so they agree that I should have two guns! The camera man comes over and tells me I'm in shot for the whole of this sequence, and to make sure I'm really going for it. Then the Director comes over and says "Just go f***ing mental! OK?" The props guy tells me that the hot cartridges from the gun shouldn't sert fire to the hay bales around me, but if they do just get out of there. OK!

Deciding this is my big scene, I get ready with the gun expert loading the guns, and just before the shoot starts, the 1st AD comes over and says, "Oh yeah, can you shoot right handed - can you wear this too" before handing me a gas mask. So, I get my big scene, going 'f***ing' mental with an AK47, and I'm shooting right-handed (imagine playing snooker, or eating with the wrong hand) and wearing a gas mask!!! We do the scene three times, it's an absolute blast and the others seem to be having as much fun as I am. The camera man grins and says "boys with toys, eh!" and I just have to agree.

We all go back down to the green room and talk about the guns a lot, deciding that being a lefty liberal guardian reader isn't half as much fun as shooting randomly with an AK47, but decidedly safer. An hour later we're told that we are done for the day, and the whole shoot, and we can go home.

It's been a mixed bag of a week - the waiting around is very trying, although certainly made easier by the company of all the other extras and the excellent crew. The short bursts of activity are fun, I think I did a good job (well, I didn't get kicked off set!) and I can't wait to see the results, which I believe won't be on telly till much later in the year. Thanks to everyone involved - and see you all soon.