The shit blog of Paul Chris Jones

9 am

Dear Diary. The food court of Butlins is like a school canteen. Even the pizza tastes just like the pizza at my secondary school. It's even got the flour on the bottom of the pizza (I've never understood why that flour is there.)

10 am

The rest of my family have gone to see a Peppa Pig show. I've decided that a Peppa Pig show is probably not for me given that I'm 35, so I've walked to the beach just across the road from Butlins. It's a very British beach, in that it's cold and windy, maybe that also explains why there’s no one else apart from me. The beach is deserted. It's one of those long beaches in the sense that when the tide goes out and goes out along the way.

On the sand are little sand-like sculptures. I don't know what they are but there are thousands of them, tiny worm sand sculptures. My dad told me once that they're the things that get left behind when sand worms bury themselves into the sand.

Hang on, fuck - one just moved! I'm not sure if it moves because there's something in there or because it's just falling over due to gravity. I'm going to kick it.

Okay, never mind. I think it was just the pull of gravity pulling it down. For a moment that was like one of Cronenberg's body horror films. [Unclear 00:03:37] steep hills, piles of seaweeds. In the distance are the giant white peaks of the Butlin's main tent, like meringue. the beaches [Unclear 00:04:27] it's not at all like those sexy Spanish beaches where the sand is golden and the water is clear. Here the water is kind of, dark colour. Going to be going in that water to see, it looks cold and freezing.

There's a sign that says it's not safe to use inflatables when the wind is towards the sea. This gives me a mental image of small children on inflatable toys drifting away further and further out to sea, as their parents panic.

11 am

We're at the Butlins swimming pool. The changing rooms are weird. They're unisex. Now, when I go to a unisex changing room, I expect to see some boobies and pussy, like at the changing rooms in Scandinavia or something. That's the good thing about unisex toilets. But no. It turns out there are cubicles, and you go inside one of these cubicles and get changed in private. What a disappointment. Come on Butlin's, sort yourself out. I want to see some boobies and pussy!

4-year-old and Girlfriend left me and 0-year-old in the changing room while I found the place to put the pram. Then we went to the pool.

The first thing that hits you at the swimming pool is the noise. It's the noise of a thousand people shouting and laughing and splashing all in a big room where the noises echo around.

Then you notice how fat and ugly everyone is. It's especially noticeable in the swimming pool because you can see people's bodies. People are fat. Men are bald. Everyone has strange, ugly misshapen faces.

But it's only the adults that are like this though. The children look like normal, healthy children. No children are fat. So it must be something that happens to people in England that when they get to adulthood, they suddenly gain weight and their faces begin to look like Cabbage Patch dolls.

Then there's an area called the wave machine. As soon as the waves start, people flock toward it. It looks like it's another Hillsborough disaster waiting to happen. The waves get surprisingly high and the people bounce up and down. How many children die each time, I wonder? At the end, the lifeguards must come with a big net to scoop out the dead children's bodies.

I needed to use the toilet, so I went back to the changing rooms. The first toilet water was full to the brim. It was blocked. The second toilet had some poos floating in it. I flushed the toilet but it wasn't enough, the poos were

still there. The third toilet, the lid was down. I didn't dare open the lid to find out what was inside. So I moved on to the fourth toilet. That one, the only thing bad about it was water on the toilet seat. It may have pee stains but I thought this was okay. I didn't need to sit down anyway. Just had to take a piss.

I couldn't find Girlfriend and 4-year-old. It took me half an hour of floating around the Lazy River to finally locate them.

Aurora wanted to know if I wanted to go on the flumes. "Sure," I said.

Then there are the flumes. There are four flumes to choose from. I forget their names. The names are something like Rib Crusher, Widow Maker, Ball Breaker and Neck Twister. Aurora points one out to me and says "That's the one you are most likely to die on because you drops into a two-metre pool of water at the end. And if you can't swim then you drown."

"Oh right," I say.

"Last time I went on it, I landed in the water head-first. I head my hit my head on the bottom of the pool and started drowning. The lifeguard pulled me out."

Fun times at Butlins.

The levels of intensity of these flumes go from easy, to medium, to severe. The only severe flume is one where you sit in a little dingy and you shoot off down a slide. But Aurora and I did one called blue coaster which is the tiniest one. We would have done more but the queues were bad. We had to queue for like half an hour just for the blue coaster.

There was one boy who looked only about three or four years old. He was dressed in a Buzz Lightyear swimming outfit. He went on the Ball Buster all by himself, poor little kid. He's probably dead now. They’ll have to fish his corpse out of the flume with the net. On his gravestone will be written his last words: "Ahhhh!"

As we were in the queue a woman's voice on the tannoy said, "Can Paul Jones and Aurora Bruton come to the reception, please?"

Fuck that, we were almost at the front now. So we might as well go down the flume. Aurora went first. Then I went next At first, it was slow but then it started to pick up speed. And then there were twists and turns. Wave after wave of water was splashing over my face, like waterboarding at Guantanamo Bay. I couldn't see. I couldn't breathe. And then, finally, I reached the end of a massive splash.

It turns out to Girlfriend and Corryn were looking for us and that's why they asked the woman to call our names.

I had to use the toilet again. And the only free cubicle was the one where poo was floating in it. And I took away trying not to think about the poo down there that I was weeing on. In the end, I couldn't help but look down at the poo, it took hold of me and forced me to look down at it. And it was these like two maybe child-sized poos floating there.

7 pm

Corryn wanted us to go to a thing called Reds Night which is Redcoats Butlins they do competitions, music and entertainment, all that sounded a bit shit. So we and Aurora instead to a late night pool party, open the pool outside of the normal opening hours of nine to five open from 7 pm to 10 pm. And I thought it’d be a good way to get on the flumes without having to queue for very long. I was right. The lines were only 10 minutes long for flumes. I went on the super bowl one and I ended up going extremely fast, probably faster than I meant to. And when I got to the part with the ball, I kept spinning around round and round the hole more times than it is supposed to because of my momentum. And Aurora said she could see my legs going round the hole but not the rest of my body, only my legs had come out. Finally, I fell through with a plop, like poo coming out of a toilet.

And Aurora and I went on the lazy river. Aurora was dancing to the music. She was the only one dancing as well as the lifeguards, they were all dancing as well. And I said, "This music is cool." It's like there's a DJ. As we turn the corner, we saw the DJ booth with a DJ putting on all the classics and 90s party tunes. Saturday Night by Whigfield, I'm Sexy and I Know It by LMFAO. Blue (Da Ba Dee) by Eiffel 65.

On the way out, Aurora was telling me that Corryn gets drunk every night and falls asleep on the sofa. And she's also been drinking a bottle of wine every day since she's been here. She started drinking in the morning and then goes back to another drink. We went to see Corryn and the rest of my family at the studio. I think it's called Studio 38 venue for the entertainment and Girlfriend said that Corryn had brought a plastic water bottle, tipped the water out and put the gin in it instead. Then she was topping up her gin and tonic from the bar with her own gin. This made me angry because she's taking us to places she wants to do, activities she wants to do where she can get drunk. We stayed at the Reds entertainment for about 10 minutes before I managed to get my family to leave. It wasn't hard because Girlfriend and 4-year-old both wanted to leave. On the stage, they were three Redcoats doing a contest of who could pack the suitcase the fastest. There was a woman and a man and after that, they had to put on a pair of pants so you could put the most things into the pants. It was like something dumb.

9 pm

We went to fair at night. It's the normal fair but open from 7 pm to 10 pm. I'd promised 4-year-old I'd take him on the go-karts, so I paid for 4-year-old and me and we got into the line. Then an obese mom and her infant son squeezed past us to join her boyfriend in the queue.

"Sorry," I said to 4-year-old. "We might have to wait a little longer in the queue now."

4-year-old groaned. I shoot the obese mom and her pikey boyfriend an angry look.

People started getting on the go-karts.

"Bollocks," I said as I realised we weren't getting on. The dad in front of me turned and looked me. I guessed my swear word had shocked him.

Then something unexpected happened - three families in front of us in the line, including Obese Mom and Pikey Boyfriend, decided to wait for the next race so they could all race together with their mates. This meant 4-year-old and I could go on the go-karts!

I had to walk past Obese Mom and Pikey Boyfriend to get to the go-karts. I felt humble and foolish now. As I passed Pikey Boyfriend, I caught his eye. I expected him to sneer at me, or be angry, but no. Instead, He smiled. He wasn't Pikey Boyfriend anymore. He was just Friendly Dad, with an expression of innocence and friendliness. A man of the world; the best of men. (ALbeit a man with a slight head deformity.) I felt ashamed that just a minute ago I'd been shooting him angry looks and wished evil tidings on him and his family. What a fool I felt.

When 4-year-old got off the go-karts, I remarked, "That was fast!"

"No Daddy," said 4-year-old. "That wasn't fast."

"Oh," I said, slightly dejected.

"That was fun and fast," said 4-year-old.

Hurrah for go-karts!

I am at the fair now, there's a ride called the chairoplanes, this is where you sit in a chair and you get swung around. A woman came off it just now and she collapsed on the floor from dizziness. She's okay though, five minutes later she was bravely walking down the steps.