The shit blog of Paul Chris Jones

Dear Diary. Every year the fair comes to Girona. Girlfriend loves it. She hypes it up until I'm excited to go too.

It's basically a huge Gypsy fair. You'd think a fair would be fun, but it's not. It's actually very stressful. Maybe it's because we're here with seven children. Luckily it's not just me left alone with seven children, because that would be a nightmare and also possibly criminal negligence. No, there are eight other adults with me. That's a good number of adults and it also means we're not outnumbered by children.

Maybe it's stressful because of the noise. Every ride is loud and the mix of them all together is a cacophony. Maybe the rides started at a normal volume, but then, because of the deafening noise of them all together, each ride increased its volume to make itself heard over the din of all the other rides until finally, we get the din that I'm hearing now. I wish I'd bought some earplugs with me because I could have saved myself massive hearing loss.

Plus there are so many people that you can barely walk two paces without bumping into someone or someone tripping over your shoelace, especially if your shoelaces are untied, as mine usually are.

The workers here at the fair are some of the strangest people. They’ve spent so long here in all the noise that they probably don’t have any hearing left and there's not a single brain cell left between them. Plus their clothes don’t fit properly. They're all too fat or too skinny. Some of them look like they're on drugs. Some of them have skin conditions. I just saw one guy with a huge tumour growing on his head. I was going to say the tumour was as big as a golf ball, but it was bigger than that.

The rides are massively overpriced at €3 to €4 each, depending on the ride. (These aren’t Alton Towers rides, mind you. These are just little kid rides.) Based on these prices, the people who work here should be the richest people in the land. Millions of euros are going into their pockets every night. Yet they don't look like millionaires. They look like drug addicts and gipsies.

Flashing lights, noise, crying children. Some stalls sell roasted chestnuts but the smoke from these stalls goes in my eyes and blinds me. Plus I'm pretty sure that smoke is a carcinogen.

I'm standing next to a ride called The Joy Train and it's been poorly painted with Disney characters. I don't think Eric wore purple trousers and I don't think the shells covering Ariel's breasts are green. And also I don't think Baloo from The Jungle Book has black fur.

The Joy Train is a train that just goes around in a circle, and in and out of a tunnel. And there are two men hitting the riders as the train goes past. One of the men is wearing a witch's mask. The other man is wearing clown trousers, a baseball cap, and a crude Spider-Man mask. He looks like someone from The Purge who would try to break into your house at three o'clock in the morning to slit your throat and steal your jewellery. Plus he's too fat to be Spider-Man.

Someone's Peppa Pig balloon just smacked me in the face.

I walked off for a minute to look at a mobile escape room. Then I came back and everyone's gone. it's amazing how quickly you can lose people here. I need a wristband with Girlfriend’s phone number written on it, so if I ever get lost, people can call the number and make sure I get back to Girlfriend. But I don't have a wristband. Maybe, later on, the police will find me dazed and confused, wandering around in circles in a forest.

I'm walking past a hook a duck stall. The ducks are discoloured and faded. One of the ducks has fallen over. It's floating around on its side. The other ducks do nothing to help: they just barge past their fallen friend. Such is the cruelty of nature. Another duck's floating face down as if it's dead.

A short fat woman is standing there carrying what looks like a hundred balloons. Each balloon is a different cartoon character. There's Peppa Pig, Elsa, Mickey Mouse, etc. I'm sure she's got the licence to sell balloons of these copyrighted characters.

The sound is a constant bombardment of sounds of sirens and alarms and disembodied voices telling you that this is the best ride yet, no this is the best ride yet, yes, the most exciting and most popular ride! Every ride seems to have a voice that says that. Even the Mr Bean ride has a voice that says that.

Yes, the Mr Bean ride. The Mr Bean ride. What I'm telling you is that there's a ride, in Spain, in the year of our Lord 2021, of Mr Bean, a quintessentially British TV show from the early 1990s. How this is possible, I don't know. It's Mr Bean.

And it's HUGE. The Mr Bean ride is easily one of the biggest rides at the fair. And people are actually paying to go on it. What this attraction is, is a big multilevel system of walkways, interspersed with fun obstacles, like a moving walkway, a spinning tunnel, a bridge, and moving stairs. Once you reach the fourth and final floor, you slide down.

What any of this has to do with Mr Bean, I don't know. You wouldn't even know it was a Mr Bean attraction if not for the words MR BEAN 4 in giant flashing letters.

The ride is called Mr Bean 4. Why Mr Bean 4? I guess there must have been versions 1, 2, 3 of the ride. What happened to them, I don't know.

There are weird statues which I guess are supposed to be Mr Bean? But they look nothing like Mr Bean. Then there are various figures painted on the ride, none of which I recognise, apart from one of Mr Bean himself. For example, there’s a woman with massive breasts, and you can see her nipples through her shirt. There's a man (not Mr Bean) trying to cover up her breasts but his bum is falling out of his trousers.

Thi ride actually looks quite fun and I wouldn't mind going on it. At least, I'd go on it if I had any children to go on it with me, which I don't, because I've lost everyone.

In my failed attempts to find Girlfriend, 3-year-old and the rest, I'm walking through the games area of the fair now. There’s camel racing, always a firm favourite. There's a game where you have to throw darts to pop balloons, which I'm sure is safe. There's some kind of lottery with a massive load of electronic goods stacked up behind a man who's been reading numbers into a microphone. The things you can win are huge: a microwave, an electric scooter, a juice machine.

It's almost 6 pm and it's beginning to get dark now. The huge trees loom overhead off the stalls. These trees I think 100 metres tall I read, usually the forest here in Girona, it's so calm and peaceful place but for this week, it's been completely overturned. I can smell hotdogs. The Final Countdown is coming from the Mr. Bean ride. I'm forced to walk at the pace of a zombie because of all the people in front of me. I'm just shuffling along with people knocking into me from either side. A huge cloud of balloons comes down and threatens to engulf me. Then it lifts up again, back into the sky.

Anyway, I find Girlfriend. She called my phone and told me where she was. The magic of modern technology. The kids went into a play area that had a ball pond and stuff like that. Apparently, each kid also has a whistle now. And Christ, the noise! It's like the Brazilian World Cup, the one with all the Vuvuzelas in it. The kids are all blowing their whistles at the same time, most of them directed at my ears. I have to put my hands over my ears.

The parents take the whistles off the kids for now, on the pretence that they might lose them but I think it's just to stop the goddamn noise. Never before have my senses been abused so much.

The kids are going on one final ride before we all go home. It’s a ride where you sit in a car shaped like a frog, and then all the frogs rotate around a giant frog in the middle. He's the king I guess. Except his paint is peeling off so it looks like a frog with a skin condition.

Each kid has got a balloon and they're hitting each other with the balloons. They look like they're having fun at least. I guess that's what you come here for really, to see the smiles on your kid’s faces and watch them beat each other with balloons. I guess it's worth the permanent hearing loss.

Next to me is a pirate-themed ride. The guy inside the ticket booth has a button which, as far as I can tell, serves no purpose except to make a deafening sound like a car alarm. Every now and then he presses it, for no reason at all. It's deafening, especially along with all the other sounds. I really should have brought some earplugs. As well as a big stick to knock people out away with. Failing that I could use it to knock myself out with.

We have moved out of the fair now on we're in front of a giant stage. There's some musicians tuning their instruments and a drummer banging his drum over and over. I don't know why he's doing that for, it’s not like you can tune a drum.

But, I guess, if I had to spend one last night of my life somewhere, here wouldn't be too bad. It's just this isn't the last night of my life, and in fact, I plan to live many, many more years, and now it seems I'll be living them with hearing loss.

I'm getting hungry and I don't have any money on me. So I asked Girlfriend she could give €4 to buy a hot dog but she refused to give me any: she said it's not time to eat yet.

I just asked her again now she said that I have to get food for the kids first. Fuck that. I'm just walking off now, just going to maybe try and pay by card or something. I've literally zero money in my wallet.