The shit blog of Paul Chris Jones

Dear Diary. It's late afternoon. Girlfriend is taking 3-year-old to the little fair by the beach. I decide to go swimming in the sea. I put my goggles on and walk into the water.

The water's warm. This should act as a warning because jellyfish like warm water. But it doesn't.

People are splashing around and having a good time. I dive into the water. The goggles are really good, I can see fish and everything. The fish swim around me, probably curious to see a white, flailing four-limbed creature in the water. I try to reach out for one but it swims just out of reach, like a pigeon when you try to kick it.

I swim further and further out. All the time I’m looking out for jellyfish. I’m terrified of them. I was stung by jellyfish at the age of 15 on a holiday much like this one. I don’t want a repeat performance.

But beneath me, under the water, is only sand, empty as a desert.

Then I panic because there's something moving down there - something fast - but then I realise it’s just an eye-floater, the small shape in my eyes.

I reach the big yellow buoy that separates the area for swimming and the area for boats. I dunk my head under the water and there's a massive chain holding the buoy. The chain goes down into the depths. It scares me a bit.

I pull my head back out the water. I'm close to the boats now, all of them white. People are drinking beer on one and talking and laughing. I can't swim any further because there's the real possibility of a boat hitting me on the head and knocking me unconscious, causing me to drown, which wouldn't be good, generally speaking.

So I start to swim back to shore, I periodically stick my head in the water to check for jellyfish, but I feel okay now knowing I haven't seen any so far and now it's just a straight swim back to shore and OH FUCK THERE'S ONE and I'm swimming away from it in a panic. It was round and white like a bowl turned upside down.

My

Maybe I imagined it. So I put my head in the water to check for more jellyfish and OH SHIT there are LITERALLY THREE MORE FLOATING RIGHT IN FRONT OF ME. They're floating, waiting, like unexploded underwater mines.

I try not to panic but instead I panic. I swim away from them, fearing that any moment now, my skin is going to brush against the evil tendrils of a jellyfish and I’m going to feel sudden extreme pain.

The shore is close but far. I keep accidentally swallowing water. I'm half drowning at this point, not because of the jellyfish but because of how scared I am.

Every couple of seconds I dunk my head under the water to check for more jellyfish. But so far, there aren't any.

Finally, I hobble to the beach. I'm out of breath and there's saltwater burning my throat. The muscles in my lower legs are too tight, like I've run a marathon.

I'm in shock. This is how my dad must have felt that day he found a corpse floating in a canal in Birmingham.

I stagger past happy sunbathers and laughing children. It's a strange juxtaposition to my terror.

I call Girlfriend to find out where she is. "I'm going to the ice cream shop," she says. So I head over to the ice cream shop.

I find Girlfriend and 3-year-old. They're having an ice cream. I sit down, still in shock.

I feel like I’ve survived a near-death experience. This has been one of the scariest experiences in my life. I'd certainly put it in the list of my top ten scariest life experiences. Here are some of the other entries in that list, in no particular order:

1. Waking up with a panic attack. I was 14 years old and didn't know what was happening to me. Everything seemed to be moving too fast, even my own body, so I had to lie perfectly still. My brother put SM:TV Live on and I started watching it. After half an hour of the distracting antics of Ant, Dec and Cat Deeley, I felt okay again. At least, until the next time I woke up with a panic attack, which was a few weeks later.
2. Getting threatened with a knife. I was on my way home after a night out drinking in Birmingham. I must have been very drunk because I can't clearly remember what happened next. All I remember is, there was this mean-looking guy with his girlfriend, and I said to him, "I'm not afraid of you!", and then he pulled out a knife and smiled, and then my face fell into an expression of horror and I turned and fled. The guy and his girlfriend laughed at me as I was running away.
3. Wandering around Birmingham drunk, with no idea where I was or how to get home. I went out drinking with my friends. Once again, I drank far too much, because the next thing I knew, I was wandering the empty streets of Birmingham alone in the early hours of the morning. There was no one on the streets so there was no one to help me. Snow was falling, so it must have been cold, and I was only wearing a shirt, trousers and shoes. I was still really drunk. I felt confused and helpless. I just wanted to get home, where it was warm and safe, but I had no idea where I was. The buildings around me looked deceptively familiar. A few times I thought I found the building where I lived, but they turned out to be completely different buildings. It was like a nightmare, one where no one will help you. I tried to sleep in a shop doorway for a while. Slowly I sobered up. I kept walking, and finally, I came across someone - a street prostitute. She helped me by calling a taxi, which took me home. It turned out I hadn't been anywhere near to where I lived.
4. Being stuck in a dream. I once had a dream where every time I woke up, I was actually still dreaming. It was like Inception - a dream within a dream within a dream. Dreams all the way down. I tried to wake up, but every time I did, I was just in another dream. I was trapped inside my dreams, like in a show where a man is in a coma and can't wake up. I heard voices of my family saying, "Wake up, Paul! Wake up!" When I eventually woke for real, it was still night, and everyone was still asleep. So no one had been shouting at me to wake up after all.
5. Waking up from a dream and seeing my bedroom consumed in flames. One night, I woke up to find that my bedroom was on fire. The cupboard, the desk, the chair, the bed - all in flames. There's nothing much scarier than waking up to find your whole bedroom's on fire. I was about to leap out of bed and run for the door, but then I realised there was no fire. It had all just been a dream - the kind of nightmare you get when you've become conditioned to a fire alarm waking you up at 2 am every morning, as I was, being in student accommodation. It was the most vivid and terrifying hallucination I've ever had.
6. Falling into a lake full of geese and ducks. My earliest memory is from when I was aged three, and I went to London with my mom, dad, two sisters and my aunt. My mom and my aunt went to the BBC studios to be audience members on Top of the Pops while my dad took me and my two sisters to Hyde Park. This park has a big lake in it, the Serpentine, and I must have gotten too close to the edge of the lake because I fell in. There was a splash, and now I was in the lake. Thankfully, the lake was shallow at this part and my head was still above the water. But something terrifying happened: all the birds in the lake - all the ducks, geese and swans - were furiously swimming towards me while making loud quacks and honks. Imagine all the birds in the lake converging on a small boy. Just at the moment when the birds were about to reach me, someone pulled me out of the lake, probably my dad. You would think that after a traumatic event like that, I'd have a phobia of ducks or something, but thankfully, I don't.

The thing is, I lived through all these experiences. And I'm still alive now.

Suddenly I’m happy instead of shocked. I could’ve drowned today but I didn’t.

I’ve cheated Death. I can almost see him waving his fist and scythe at me in anger. Fuck you, Death. I've won again.