The shit blog of Paul Chris Jones

Dear Diary. It's 6 am. I'm in a dream involving a museum of scary toys. It's a good dream. There's this dummy that talks and a clock that-

"Da-dee!"

It's 3-year-old shouting from his bedroom.

"Da-DEEEE!"

I sigh. I get up. I go to 3-year-old's room.

"What is it, my most precious, most beautiful darling?" I say.

"Daddy, can you put the blanket on?"

I put the blanket on.

"Daddy, where's Pikachu?"

I feel around in the dark, trying to locate 3-year-old's stuffed Pikachu toy by touch alone. My hand comes across a teddy, then 3-year-old's leg. Then Pikachu.

"Here," I say, handing Pikachu to 3-year-old. Or I think it's 3-year-old. It's too hard to see in the dark.

Lost Pikachu retrieved, I go back to bed.

Then: "Da-deee!"

Girlfriend's awake too.

"What time is it?"

"It's 6 am."

"Christ," I say. "I regret having children." Then I add, "We need an abortion." Okay, I don't say that because it would upset Girlfriend. But I feel like saying it. She's pregnant with our second child and I'm dreading its arrival. Because I've gone through one baby, I already know what to expect when the second baby is born: sleep deprivation and depression.

I go back to 3-year-old's room.

"What now?" I ask.

"I'm hungry," says 3-year-old.

So I go to the kitchen, open the fridge, take out an apple, close the fridge, cut a piece from the apple and bring the piece of apple to 3-year-old.

Then a munching noise in the dark. A sound like a baby monkey chewing.

"Can you sleep with me, Daddy?"

"No, I can't sleep with you. I'm sleeping in my own bed."

I go back to bed.

Then: "Daddy!"

I go back into 3-year-old's room.

"What?"

"I'm thirsty"

I give him his glass of water.

Finally, I sigh and say, "I'll sleep next to you"

Maybe if I sleep next to him, he'll go back to sleep.

"Can you tell me a story Daddy?"

"No, it's nighttime now."

Thirty seconds later: "Is it morning yet?"

"Not yet. It's still night." That's a lie. It's 6:30 am. It's pretty much morning really. But I'm hoping 3-year-old will think it's still nighttime and go to sleep.

Ten seconds later: "Is it morning now?"

"No, it's still night. It will be morning soon."

3-year-old makes an exasperated noise. "It's a very nighty day today"

I'm impressed with his ability to make a new expression, 'nighty day'.

"And now?" he says "Is it morning now?"

"Let's go see," I say, knowing full well that it's not light outside yet, but fuck it, let's go see. So I get out of his bed and head for the door.

"Wait for me Daddy!" he cries with fear.

So I wait for him. We go to the balcony together. It's still dark outside. Dawn will come soon, though.

"Where do I go now?" he says, unsure whether he should go back to bed.

"Now you can do anything you want," I say.

"Anything I want?"

"Anything you want. As for me, I'm going to do some writing."

I boot up my laptop. There are mornings when I'm good at writing. Today is one of those mornings. 3-year-old sits on the sofa and watches me writing on the laptop.

"I'm hungry," he says.

So we go to the kitchen to find something to eat.

"I want something frozen," he says. He opens the freezer himself and takes out an ice lolly. "Can you open it for me, Daddy?"

So I take the cellophane wrapper off the ice lolly and hand the ice lolly back to him. Before you judge me for letting 3-year-old eat an ice lolly before breakfast, you should know that these ice lollies are made of fruit and vegetable juice, so they're healthy.

3-year-old finishes his ice lolly. We go back to the living room.

I try to write, to get my ideas down before I forget them. I'm trying to write a book about the three years I spent in Canada.

But now Girlfriend is up and getting ready for work. She turns on the radio. Music comes out of it, dance music, the kind of music you'd hear in a nightclub. Even though it's 7:30 am. What kind of radio station plays club music at 7 bloody 30 am?

"Daddy, your mouse mat is a trampoline," says 3-year-old. I look and he's bouncing a Harry Potter figure up and down on my mouse mat.

Suddenly all the electricity goes off. We're plunged into darkness. Power cut. Maybe the power will be out all day.

"I can't see," says 3-year-old. Maybe he thinks he's gone blind.

But a few moments later, the lights come back on, as well as the inane chatter of the radio. It's like a miracle. "It's magic!" says 3-year-old.

Girlfriend is heading off for work. Because I'm self-employed, I get the task of looking after 3-year-old.

"Can you go to the new apartment in an hour?" Girlfriend says The plumber's coming to install the extractor fan."

I'm not sure plumbers install extractor fans. I get a mental image of Mario showing up with a toolbox and a magic mushroom.

"Today I'm having a pregnancy scan," says Girlfriend. "Even though you won't be able to come in the room [because of COVID], do you want to come anyway?"

Me: "Nah."

I don't care about this pregnancy. In fact, I'm secretly against it. I hope the scan shows that the baby's dead. I would cheer like a football fan when his team scores a goal.

Girlfriend leaves.

"I want a book," says 3-year-old. I look at the bookshelf. The bookshelf is empty. Because yesterday I moved all the books to the new apartment.

"There might still be some books in your bedroom," I say.

There are still some books in his bedroom. We find a comic of The Lion King and I read that to him. 3-year-old wants to know if the cloud of Mufasa's head is real or just a dream. How do I know? Rafiki could have slipped Simba some hallucinogenic drugs for all I know.

Then we get to the part where Scar gets the blame for everything.

"Why are all the animals dead?"

"Scar did that. He let the hyenas eat all the animals. Now they are no animals left."

"Why are all the trees dead?"

"Er... Scar did that." Hyenas don't eat leaves though. And if the other animals are dead, like the giraffes, then surely there would be more leaves, not zero leaves?

"And why is the sky grey?"

"Scar did that."

"And where is the river gone?"

"Scar did that." Yes, Scar's negligence has caused an entire river to dry up. Somehow.

"I am hungry," says 3-year-old.

I offer him the following things to eat: porridge, cornflakes, bread, frozen berries, biscuits, an apple.

"I want another ice lolly."

"We don't have any ice lollies left. Someone ate them all." By someone, I mean him.

"I want another ice lolly!"

"Look, the ice lolly shop isn't open yet. But when it opens, we'll go, okay?"

"I want one now!"

What does he want me to bloody do, conjure an ice lolly out of thin air?

We set out to the new apartment. It's time to go meet the plumber, whether it's Mario, Luigi, or someone else. 3-year-old's in the pushchair. He's a bit old for a pushchair but using a pushchair is actually easier for me because this way, we don't need to stop every few seconds for 3-year-old to inspect a shop window.

It's 8:30 am and the streets of Girona are strangely quiet. Normally loads of kids would be standing around, waiting to go into school. But school doesn't open until next week.

The sky is cloudy and the day is early but the weather is already hot. 22 degrees Celcius, says my phone.

On the way, I steal glances at all the attractive women who pass by, especially the ones wearing low-cut tops. This is my only pleasure in life so don't judge me.

"I’m hungry," says 3-year-old.

"We will go and get some more ice lollies but the shop isn't open yet"

"I’m hungry."

And I keep hearing moans of "I’m hungry" coming from the pushchair all the way to the new apartment. It's hard to believe that 3-year-old is the product of four billion years of evolution.

We arrive at the new apartment. It's only a few minutes walk from the old apartment. The plumber arrives shortly after we do. To my disappointment, he's not Mario. He's just a fat man in a dirty vest. Fan Man, I'm calling him, because he's come to install our extractor fan. Though I could also call him Fat Man. I let him in and he immediately gets to work in the kitchen.

I'm not sure if 3-year-old and I can leave. Are we supposed to stay here in case Fan Man tries to steal our stuff? Or if Fan Man needs something, like a spanner? It's probably best to stay.

"3-year-old, come and look at your new bedroom," I say. But he doesn't want to see it. Just as well, really. It's a mess. There's nothing in there but five chairs gathered in the middle of the room. They're weird chairs too. They're like director chairs. Remnants of the things left over when this place used to be a school.

Tomorrow night, he'll be sleeping in this room, I think to myself. It's hard to believe.

I show him all his books, balanced precariously in a wardrobe. Hundreds of books. "Wow!" he says as if they're new books. These are the same books he's always had.

There are jigsaw puzzles too. We fit nine pieces together of a jigsaw puzzle of an airport and 3-year-old says, "This one is too hard," and gives up. "I want an easier one."

"What about this one? This one has just four pieces."

"Too hard."

Fan Man is still working away. Then comes the sound of a drill. FRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR. 3-year-old puts his hands over his ears.

Then comes the sound of running water. Hang on - running water? Installing an extractor fan shouldn't involve water. Even I know that.

Oh fuck, what if Fan Man has drilled into a water pipe? I imagine water shooting out all across the kitchen.

I go to check what's going on. Fan Man is just using the sink to wash his tools or something. That's a relief.

I ask Fan Man if it's okay if 3-year-old and I leave.

"But what if I need tools from my car?" he says.

Just leave the door open, I tell him. There's nothing in here worth stealing.

We head to the supermarket, the one that sells ice lollies. The streets are getting busier now. Only half an hour difference and already there are more people, more cars putting untold amounts of pollution into our lungs.

We buy the ice lollies and 3-year-old starts eating one outside the shop. We take them home and put them in the freezer.

"I have an idea," I say. "What if we go to Abacus and get a new Duplo set?"

"Yeah!" says 3-year-old.

So we head to Abacus. Little does he know that I've tricked him. It's me who wants the Duplo set.

I have to navigate the pushchair from a steep curb down onto the road. "Son of a bitch," I say automatically.

"Why did you say 'son of a bitch' daddy?"

How does one explain the word 'bitch' to a three-year-old? Probably one doesn't.

But I don't see any harm in explaining the word to him though. He's only three. How much damage can he do with the word 'bitch'? He's not an office manager. He's not going to create a toxic workplace.

So I explain to 3-year-old what a bitch means. It's a woman who you don’t like or a female dog. A 'son of a bitch' is the son of a woman you don't like. But you can also say 'son of a bitch' when you're angry.

After explaining all this to him, now he's even more confused.

Anyway, we buy the Duplo set. It's a set of a house. It has doors, windows, a roof, everything. I'm excited to get it home.

We get home, put the house together, and then play with it. 3-year-old has a Duplo cat and he makes me be the Duplo family - a man, woman and a girl. 3-year-old makes the cat omnipotent and has it jump up and down on the family members and shriek in their ears. It's like Duplo hell.

"It's time to go to Iaia's house," I say.

"No, I want to play more."

In the end, I persuade 3-year-old to leave the house and go to his grandmother's house by giving him another ice lolly. The third ice lolly of the day.

I drop 3-year-old off at this grandmother's house. Now I'm going to the new apartment to leave the pushchair there.

A young man is sitting at a cafe table with his girlfriend. The man watches me as I pass, an expression of boredom on his face. His girlfriend, sitting opposite, is engrossed on her phone. Unlike him, she's laughing and grinning. Whatever's on the screen must be entertaining.

A professional cyclist, donned in cyclist gear, cycles past, with not one but two bikes. He rides on the first bike while he holds onto the second bike with his right hand. He keeps the second bike perfectly balanced as he speeds past.

Girlfriend sends me a message: "In hospital now..."

She's about to go in for her pregnancy scan. Suddenly I don't hope the fetus is dead. I hope it's alive.

I imagine the little innocent thing in Girlfriend's body, already with ten fingers and ten toes.

Come on baby, I think. You can do it. Even though this is illogical because either the fetus is alive or it's dead. Wishing isn't going to change anything.

I'm heading back when I notice the same man and woman sitting in this cafe. The woman is still on her phone. Then I realise with disappointment she’s actually checking out her nails.

I get home. I sit down at the computer. It's 12:30 pm. For over six hours I've been awake and I've achieved fuck-all. Maybe now I can finally do some work.

Then my phone starts vibrating. It's Girlfriend. I hesitate before pressing the answer button. This is where I find out if my unborn second child is alive or dead. Or if it's alive but has webbed feet.

"Hello!" says Girlfriend cheerily. "The scan went fine. The baby's healthy!"

I breathe a sigh of relief.

Then all the lights go off again.

*****

That night I'm in the kitchen of the new apartment and I lift up some cardboard and FUCK there's a massive great big cockroach underneath. It's fucking horrible, like something from a heroin-withdrawal nightmare. Its two massive antennas are swivelling around. It's disgusting and terrifying.

I can't just leave it here to sit in my new home and give birth to hundreds of cockroaches. I have to catch it or kill it.

But how do you catch/kill a cockroach? I don't know. I've never had to deal with a cockroach before.

I find a small pen pot to catch it in. Then I slowly approach the cockroach, trying not to scare it. I find myself talking to it: "Now Mr Cockroach, I’m just going to put this pot on you. Don’t be scared." I'm more scared than the cockroach.

I try to put the pot over the cockroach but it runs away fast with the speed of Usain Bolt. I can’t believe how fast it moves. Then it falls off the hob and onto the floor.

I should mention I'm wearing sandals and the idea of a cockroach running across my toes sends me into new heights of fear and panic.

Now it’s by the radiator. What the fuck do I do? Maybe I can stun it with washing up liquid. Yeah, Fairy liquid.

So I grab a bottle of Fairy liquid and squirt the cockroach with it. The cockroach runs away and up the wall. I didn’t know cockroaches could climb walls, like Spider-Man.

I need a new weapon. I find a big saucepan lid. Perfect. If this doesn’t catch the cockroach then nothing will.

BAM. Down goes the saucepan lid. I did it! The bastard cockroach is under the lid, squirming around helplessly, trying to find a way to escape.

I take the cockroach to the bathroom and throw it into the toilet. Die you bitch!

For one horrible moment I think the cockroach is on my hand. But then no, I see it in the toilet. It’s swimming around helplessly. One flush and it's gone.

I've won, but who knows how many more cockroaches there are in this apartment.