The shit blog of Paul Chris Jones

Dear Diary. Today is Saturday which is bad because it means 4-year-old doesn't go to school. In the afternoon, it's raining pretty hard and I decide to take 4-year-old to the local indoor play centre. Girlfriend says not to go because of the rain but I was born and raised in England so I'm basically half-man, half-rain. I stick 4-year-old in his pushchair but I can't find the rain cover. So I fashion a makeshift rain cover out of a vacuum storage bag and two pegs.

4-year-old and I get to the indoor play centre and we're both pretty dry. But there's another problem: the indoor play area has a sign that says "Reserved for a birthday party". But I'm not deterred. I just pretend that I don't see the sign.

4-year-old goes in and he wants me to come in too. There are loads of kids in there, and a couple of dads. No one says anything about 4-year-old and me being there when we obviously shouldn't be. In fact, one of the dads is quite friendly and smiles at me.

All goes well until, about an hour later when a staff member comes over and tells everyone has leave.

"I'm sorry everyone, but the play area is closed now. There's another birthday party coming."

So everyone leaves the play area. Everyone except for me and 4-year-old because 4-year-old wants to stay longer.

Then the staff member comes back. He's surprised to see us still in the play area when he told us to leave five minutes ago. "You have to leave!" he says.

We leave.

On the way out, 4-year-old sees a toy machine. You put a coin in and a cheap plastic toy comes out. I let him do it a couple of times seeing as he's promised, he'll pay me back from his pocket money. He gets a bouncy ball and a fake tattoo. Then I come up with a cunning plan to get free things from the front of machines. I realised if you put in one of the plastic shopping trolley tokens that are designed to act like a euro coin, then it works. So I have two of these and put them in and like that we get a couple more toys and another bouncy ball and some kind of squishy ball. This is a great idea that I've stumbled across.

Then I realise this is not a great idea after all. Because now I don't have any plastic shopping trolley tokens to put into shopping trolleys anymore.

What I really need is a huge bag of fake euro coins. Then we can get all the vending machine food and toys that I want.

4-year-old says he wants to go to the indoor rock-climbing centre next so I walk over there, pushing 4-year-old in the pushchair. 4-year-old is on my phone on Google Maps Street View. He's trying to find our house using Street View but he's going down some motorway. Each time he taps on the phone he gets further and further away from Girona.

We get to the rock-climbing centre but 4-year-old doesn't want to climb now. He wants to sit in the pushchair and play games on my phone instead. Normally, I disapprove of parents who let their children play games on their phones. But now I see an opportunity. I say to 4-year-old, "I'm going to climb and I'll leave you here with the phone, okay?" And 4-year-old agrees, and like that, I can do some climbing.

Then it's time to go home. On the way home, 4-year-old is playing a Goosebumps game. We have to build a scary town. And I have to keep stopping every minute because he wants me to read the dialogue to him because he can't read yet, he's only four.

I get home. Girlfriend and 0-year-old are there. 0-year-old's crying and Girlfriend is cooking the dinner. She says I need to take a shower because my top is half covered in sweat from the climbing that I did. So I take 0-year-old. 0-year-old's done a poo. I change his nappy. Then I take off all my clothes so I can have a shower.

But then 4-year-old comes and asks if I can read him a book. 4-year-old needs to do a poo but he can only do a poo when I'm reading a book to him, because this is the way it's always been and now he's been conditioned to do a poo while I'm reading a book to him, like a Pavlovian dog. He literally can't poo if I'm not there reading a book to him.

Girlfriend comes into the bathroom and she sees me sitting naked on the edge of the bathtub, holding 0-year-old in one arm and a book in the other, and while reading to 4-year-old who's trying to do a poo on the toilet.

"No, no, no!" she says. She takes 0-year-old and I get dressed. So much for the shower.

4-year-old and I have dinner while Girlfriend breastfeeds 0-year-old and then I put 4-year-old to bed. I feel like it's time for me to go to bed as well. I'm feeling pretty tired all day because I had to get up two times during the night to change 0-year-old's nappy. But all in all, I guess it's been a pretty good day.