The shit blog of Paul Chris Jones

Dear Diary. Today it's my brother's 31st birthday. He has an Australian girlfriend called Emma. Today we're having lunch with his girlfriend's parents in a pub.

I've never met Emma's parents before. They're from Australia, just like Emma.

"What's your mom and dad's names?" I ask Emma.

"Anne and Ken," she says. But she says it so fast I hear it as just one word: "Anakin".

"Anakin?" I say. "What, like Anakin Skywalker?"

"No," she says, laughing. "Anne and Ken"

"Oh."

We get to the pub. Her mom and dad are already there, waiting for us outside. They are two healthy-looking old people, and not dressed in Darth Vader costumes or wielding lightsabers.

"Y'alright?" says Ken, in an Australian accent. Wow. Anne and Ken have Australian accents. I don't know why this impresses me, but it does. Two real Australians, right here in front of me. Never mind that my brother's girlfriend is Australian and I've known her for years.

We sit down at a table. Suddenly I blurt out, "I used to watch Neighbours when I was a kid." I hope this will impress Anne and Ken.

Neighbours, by the way, is an Australian TV soap that was inexplicably popular in England. BBC1 used to show it at 5:35 pm every weekday, which was after the kids' programmes like Blue Peter and Byker Grove and before the six o'clock news. Then at six o'clock we'd change the channel and watch The Simpsons on Channel 4.

"We didn't watch Neighbours in Australia," says Ken. "We watched Eastenders instead."

Whoa. So while we were watching Australian soaps, Australians were watching our soaps.

So wait. What kind of TV do people in the Czech Republic watch? Soap operas from Djibouti?

After we order food, Ken tells us about his experiences so far in England.

"It's so green here. Everywhere you look, there's plants. It doesn't look green in Australia."

"What colour is it in Australia?" I ask. "Yellow?"

Adam scoffs. "It's red, Paul. The outback is red."

"And the driving here," Ken continues. "Crikey, the roundabouts. I can't get used to 'em."

Doesn't Australia have roundabouts? It would be ironic if they don't have roundabouts in Australia because there's an Australian bar in Birmingham called Roundabout.

Oh wait. The pub is called Walkabout, not Roundabout. Never mind.

"Don't you have roundabouts back in Australia?" I ask Ken.

"We have roundabouts like, but not like the ones you guys have here in England!" says Ken. "The roundabouts here are bonkers! I never know which lane to get into."

Anne nods in agreement. "We end up driving the wrong way."

"We'd end up driving to bloody Timbuctoo!" says Ken.

I don't understand what the big deal is with roundabouts but I laugh at Ken's joke anyway. I don't know why I should care about Emma's mom and dad liking me, because they're not my inlaws.

But when the food comes, I make an Australian social faux pas: "So I heard Australia has a big problem with the Aborigines?" I say.

Ken's face turns pale. Anne freezes, her fork halfway to her open mouth. Adam glares at me. Emma's silent.

"Well I have a theory about the Aborigines," I continue. "I think they have a genetic predisposition to alcoholism."

No one says anything so I carry on.

"It would all make sense. It's why they drink so much, even though the government gives them hand-outs so they're not poor. You see, I was reading about the American Indians, and those guys had a huge problem with alcohol addiction. The early white traders would get the Indians drunk on rum before making trades so they could get the best deals. And the Indians couldn't do anything about it, because as soon as they saw rum, they couldn't help themselves. They'd just drink themselves into a stupor. It's like they couldn't stop themselves from drinking it. And I think it's the same with the Aborigines in Australia."

No one says anything for a few moments. Ken's staring down at his plate.

"Well," says Anne, clearing her throat. "I think it's all generational. The parents pass on the behaviour to their children."

We all keep eating our food in silence.

Later, after the meal, Adam pulls me to one side and hisses, "You can't talk about Aborigines to Australians. It's a taboo topic."

"Oh," I say. "Sorry about that."

"Yeah, they don't like talking about the Aborigines."

"But don't you think I might be right?" I say. "That the Aborigines might have a genetic predisposition to alcoholism?"

"It doesn't matter," says Adam. "You can't say things like that. You might very well be right, it could be genetics, but that's not what people like to hear. You have to blame the white people instead. You have to say things like, 'Well, the problems of the Aborigines today are due to historical and cultural factors, like dispossession, discrimination, trauma, disruption of traditional lifestyles, loss of land and loss of their cultural identity'. Also, mention that some remote Aboriginal communities have limited access to addiction treatment services. Things like that. White people love hearing that."

"But isn't that in itself racist? Putting all the blame on the white people?"

"Well yeah, but white people like to feel guilty. It's one of their favourite past times along with sudoku and jogging. So you have to make sure to emphasise that it's all white people's fault. Or else white people get upset."

I didn't know the white people in Australia have so many problems too. They have almost as many problems as the Aborigines.

***

After the pub we all go for a walk. My brother Adam's leading the way.

"So what's there to see in Birmingham?" Ken asks me.

"Well," I say. I happen to be an expert on Birmingham, having lived here for the first twenty years of my life. "I can tell you what not to visit. And that place is the Coffinworks."

"The Coffinworks?" says Anne, sounding interested. "What's that then?"

"It's basically an old coffin factory. It went out of business and now it's a museum. I went once with my girlfriend, back in like, 2016? Because TripAdvisor used to rate this coffin museum as the number one thing to do in Birmingham. The number one thing. Out of like 2,000 things. So it was rated more highly than an IMAX cinema, an aquarium, and Cadbury World. So I took my girlfriend there just because TripAdvisor said it was so good. Well, she hated it. She said it was boring. So don't go there. Don't go to the coffin museum."

Ken and Anne laugh. I'm in their good books again.

Adam's leading us past boarded-up pubs and piss-stained walls.

"Where are we going?" I ask Adam.

"The city centre," he says. "But I thought Anne and Ken might like to see the Coffinworks first."

"Wait," I say. "The Coffinworks?"

"Yeah, it's on the way."

"You want to take Emma's mom and dad to the old place I told them not to go?"

"Yeah," says Adam, giving me an annoyed look. "It's the on the way."

I don't see what the coffin museum being "on the way" has anything to do with it. There might be a sewage treatment plant "on the way" too but I don't think Anne and Ken want to see that.

Did I mention it's Adam's 31st birthday today? Here are some ideas for celebrating a 31st birthday: bungee jumping, skydiving, hot air balloon ride, flying lesson, and racing car driving experience.

Note that a tour of a coffin museum is not on that list.

I can't believe it. The one place I told Anne and Ken not to go in Birmingham and now we're actually going there.

But who knows? Maybe Anne and Ken will like the coffin museum. In fact, I'm sure Anne and Ken can't wait. They can even pick out their own coffins in the gift shop while they're there. Maybe the museum can deliver the coffins to Australia.

We get to the coffin museum. Ken pays for our tickets. I should mention that he paid for our lunch as well. I like Ken; he pays for everything. I wish he was with me all the time. That way I would never have to pay for anything. Maybe Ken will adopt me as his son-in-law instead of Adam.

The tour begins. We're shown the courtyard, the big iron stamping machines, the little delicate sewing machines, and the office.

The main thing you need to know about the Coffinworks is that they never made coffins: they made the brass fittings for coffins instead, like the handles, holders, and crucifixes. So it should be called the Coffinfittingworks if anything.

You'd think it would be boring, but actually, I find it interesting. I like it. It's not really a museum, it's an old factory that has closed down. Everything is left exactly how it used to be, even down to a piece of paper stuck to the wall next to the kettle that says how many spoons of sugar each worker liked in their tea and whether each worker wanted milk in their tea or not. It gives you an idea of what the factory was really like. It's living history.

The tour is only meant to last an hour but I stretch it out to an hour and a half by asking the tour guides lots of questions. Questions like "What's the difference between a coffin and a casket?" (coffins have six sides whereas caskets have four sides) and "Were there ever any gruesome injuries here?" (a couple of workers lost fingers in the machines, according to the tour guide.)

But Anne and Ken look incredibly bored. Near the end of the tour, they sit down in the nearest chairs and wait for the tour to be over. It's strange: Anne and Ken are old people, and I thought old people like museums?

When we leave, I turn to the tour guide — an old bald man wearing a beige utilitarian worker's coat — and say, "That was really good. I enjoyed that." And I mean it.

The tour guide beams a toothless smile. Maybe it's the first time in his ten years of working here that anyone has ever told him that.

"Thanks," he says. "I'm glad you did."

Adam, Emma, Anne, and Ken all glare at me as if I'm weird.

What? It wasn't my idea to go to the Coffinworks.

***

Next Adam takes us go to Brindleyplace. It's a lovely place, and probably the best place in all of Birmingham. It's a canal with pubs and old canal boats.

Emma and her parents want to go on a canal boat tour. Adam and I wave them off as their canal boat departs. I don't do the tour because I already did it last year. I remember after about twenty minutes on the tour, the canal boat leaves the nice part of the canal and enters the bad part of the canal, which has litter, abandoned shopping trolleys, graffiti, disused factories with broken windows, and a homeless person living in a tent. I wonder what Anne and Ken will think of that. Maybe it will remind them of the Aborigines in Australia.

While we wait for Emma and her parents to come back from the tour, Adam and I go inside the Lego shop.

Adam hasn't been in a Lego shop for years and he's amazed by all the new Lego sets. "Paul!" he says. "Look at this one! It's Rivendell from Lord of the Rings!"

Indeed, there's Rivendell, in Lego. There's Gandalf, Aragorn, the hobbits, and the rest of the Fellowship, in the Elvish sanctuary of Middle-Earth, at a tiny scale of 1:40.

"We never had anything like this when we were kids," says Adam. "And look at this one! It's a lighthouse!"

I'm more interested in the pick-a-brick section, specifically the 2x2 bricks and 2x4 bricks. These bricks are good for building things. I don't have enough of these bricks at home.

So I start filling a cup with 2x2 bricks and 2x4 bricks. Adam helps. But instead of just chucking the bricks in the cup as normal people would, we try to fit as many Lego bricks in the cup as possible. We do this by building layers. Layers, people! It’s all about the LAYERS! We’re in the Lego shop for a good half an hour, building layer after layer of Lego bricks, just so we can fit a few more bricks into the cup.

One the layers are done, we squeeze as many Legos pieces as we can down into the empty spaces. I'm tempted to rip open a Lord of the Rings set so I can put a Lego Gandalf figure in my cup too, but I don't think they let you do that.

By the end, we've stuffed so many Lego bricks into this cup that the lid is on the verge of exploding off. The man at the counter has to tape it on. I'm imagining the whole cup exploding as soon as I get out of the Lego shop. Lego bricks will fly everywhere, causing kids to scream with joy because they'll think it's raining Lego. And I'll run around shouting, "Give me back those bricks, you bastards, they're mine!" as the kids run off with my newly-bought Lego pieces. I'll have to quickly build a gun out of Lego and menace the kids with it to get my Lego back. Then a goose from the canal will eat one of my Lego bricks I'll have to punch the goose in the stomach to make it throw the brick back up.

But none of that happens. The tape holds.

***

For dinner we go to a pub called the Verda Lounge. Adam drives, Emma sits in the passenger seat next to him and I sit in the back. Anne and Ken are taking their own car.

I'm trying to read Eric Idle's autobiography but it's a bit difficult because Adam and Emma keep fretting about things related to driving. Every so often their panicky voices make me look up in alarm because I expect to see our car about to collide with an old man or a lamppost. But instead, it's always something trivial like which lane they should be in or what speed they should be driving at.

After this happens for a fifth time, I ask, "Emma's mom and dad are coming too, right?"

"Yes," says Emma.

"And they're driving?"

"Yeah, my dad's driving," says Emma.

Jesus Christ. If Adam and Emma are having this much trouble driving to a pub, what must it be like for her parents? Two Australians with almost zero experience of driving on British roads? What if they get to a roundabout and don't know which lane to get into and they end up driving to somewhere far off like Portsmouth?

But when we get to the pub, I'm astonished to see Ken pull up beside us moments later. Anne's in the passenger seat next to him. Both Anne and Ken are smiling happily.

"Did you find the drive difficult?" I ask Ken.

"Nah, you just follow the navigator," he says breezily. (Navigator must be the Australian term for sat-nav.)

Well there you go. That was where Adam and Emma went wrong: you just follow the navigator.

Then my phone rings at the same time as Adam's. We're both getting the same call. It's Dad, calling us both on Facebook Messenger.

"Where is everyone?" says Dad, his voice coming out of my phone and Adam's phone simultaneously.

"We're here," I say.

"Well I'm here," says my dad. "By the doors."

"Which doors?" I say.

"The front doors!"

We search for my dad by the front doors but he's not there. Maybe he's fallen through a portal to another dimension like Homer Simpson in the Treehouse of Horror VI and we're going to have to pull him out with a rope.

"We can't see you," I say finally.

"I'm right here, by the front doors!" says my dad. "At the Renato lounge."

"What?"

"The Renato lounge. That's where we're going isn't it?"

"Dad, we're all at the Verda lounge."

"What?"

"We're all at the Verda lounge," I say. "That's where we're having dinner."

"Dad, didn't you read the messages?" says Adam.

"Oh bloody hell," says my dad. "Right, give me ten minutes to get there." Then he hangs up.

We go inside the pub. My sister Lisa, her boyfriend and their baby daughter are already there. A few minutes later my sister Corryn shows up with her new boyfriend Chris and her daughter Aurora. Chris seems like a nice guy. I'm happy Corryn met him.

My dad finally arrives. "Right, I thought we were meeting at the Renato lounge," he says. "Adam, you told me we were meeting there."

"No I didn't," says Adam. "I told you the Verda lounge. It's in the messages."

Anyway, it doesn't matter. We're all here now, and that's what matters.

It's quite incredible really. Everyone from my family is here. My dad, my brother, my younger sister, my older sister. Their children and partners. And of course, Emma's mom and dad, Anne and Ken (not Anaken).

I can't remember the last time my family were all together. It must have been four years ago. You'd think it'd be more often, but I live in Spain and Adam's been living in Australia.

It's nice to be with my family. Everyone's laughing and chatting. I tell Aurora my story about my cup of Lego exploding outside the Lego shop and she laughs hysterically, especially at the part where I make a gun out of Lego bricks and threaten the kids to get my Lego back. Then I show Corryn and Aurora photos from my Instagram account. There's a photo of poo on a plate (which has zero likes), a photo of a mannequin with its trousers pulled down sitting outside my Dad's house, a video of 1-year-old holding a replica gun (a replica of a real gun, not a Lego gun), and a video of me eating an entire Dairylea Lunchable in one massive bite. Corryn and Aurora can't stop laughing.

After the dinner, everyone says goodbye to each other. I say goodbye to Anne and Ken. I wonder if I'll ever see Anne and Ken again. Probably not.

***

Adam, Emma, my Dad and I arrive back at my Dad's house.

Then suddenly, I remember something.

"Adam," I say. "Isn't it your birthday today?"

"Oh yeah," he says. "31 years young. Did I tell you what happened on my 21st birthday?" asks Adam.

"No," I say.

Adam looks incredulous. "I never told you what happened on my 21st birthday?"

I don't know why he's asking twice. Literally just a few seconds I said 'no'.

"So it was my 21st birthday," Adam begins, like an old man wistfully reminiscing about his childhood. "And I had a grey T-shirt at the time that said YOLO. So I put on my YOLO T-shirt and then I invited all my mates from uni and school to a bar in Selly Oak, probably 15 to 20 people. And as I was leaving the house, Dad said, 'Adam, here's a hundred pounds for your birthday' and he gave me a hundred pounds. So I went out with a hundred pounds in my wallet."

I interrupt to say, "Dad's never given me a hundred pounds for my birthday."

"Yeah, well, that's because you're not his favourite son," says Adam. "Anyway, I probably got to the bar at half-eight. And the first thing I did when I walked in is wave to everyone, get the £100 out of my wallet, slap the money down on the bar, and say, 'Can I get a hundred shots please?' So the bartenders lined up a hundred shot glasses on the bar and started pouring the shots. Then I carried over tray after tray of shots to the table, where everyone was, to get the party started. I remember picking up a shot and pouring it down my throat, and then before I'd even put the glass down, I picked up another shot, drank it, picked up another shot, drank it. I probably drank a good amount of these shots to start the night off. The next thing I remember I was staggering up to the bar - I probably had shots down my t-shirt - and trying to buy a pint. The bartender refused to serve me. He said, 'Sir, we can't serve you any more drinks, you're drunk.' So one of my mates said, "I'll go up." He went up and he got a few pints. So I drank pints. The last thing I remember, I was out in the street and two of my friends, John and Alex, were putting me into the back of a taxi, and I was going home. It was the end of the night. My 21st birthday was over. And guess what time that was?"

"I don't know," I say.

"Nine thirty," says Adam. "So I'd spent the hundred quid, I'd got absolutely fucked, and I'd left my birthday party just an hour in. In fact, I think I got kicked out. I remember I was really drunk and it was only half nine. Yeah. So that was my 21st birthday."

"But don't you want to go out tonight though? To celebrate your 31st birthday?"

Adam thinks about this for a moment. As he's thinking, Emma calls up the stairs: "Adam, do you want a cup of tea?"

"Yeah," Adam shouts back. Then he adds: "Make mine a decaf."

A decaf. He doesn't even want a caffeinated tea on his birthday.

In the end, we all just go to bed.

But I suppose it doesn't matter. What does matter is that I have a newly-bought cup of Lego.